In The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle develops a theory of institutional facts and objects, of which money, borders and property are presented as prime examples. These objects are the result of us collectively intending certain natural objects to have a certain status, i.e. to ‘count as’ being certain social objects. This view renders such objects irreducible to natural objects. In this paper we propose a radically different approach that is more compatible with standard economic theory. We claim that (...) such institutional objects can be fully understood in terms of actions and incentives, and hence the Searlean apparatus solves a non-existent problem. (shrink)

Contemporary discussion concerning institutions focus on, and mostly accept, the Searlean view that institutional objects, i.e. money, borders and the like, exist in virtue of the fact that we collectively represent them as existing. A dissenting note has been sounded by Smit et al. (Econ Philos 27:1–22, 2011), who proposed the incentivized action view of institutional objects. On the incentivized action view, understanding a specific institution is a matter of understanding the specific actions that are associated with the institution and (...) how we are incentivized to perform these actions. In this paper we develop the incentivized action view by extending it to institutions like property, promises and complex financial organisations like companies. We also highlight exactly how the incentivized action view differs from the Searlean view, discuss the method appropriate to such study and discuss some of the virtues of the incentivized action view. (shrink)

What does being money consist in? We argue that something is money if, and only if, it is typically acquired in order to realise the reduction in transaction costs that accrues in virtue of agents coordinating on acquiring the same thing when deciding what thing to acquire in order to exchange. What kinds of things can be money? We argue against the common view that a variety of things (notes, coins, gold, cigarettes, etc.) can be money. All monetary systems are (...) best interpreted as implementing the same basic protocol. Money, i.e. the thing that we coordinate on acquiring in order to lower our transaction costs, is, in all cases, a set of positions on an abstract mathematical object, namely a relative ratio scale. The things that we ordinarily call ‘money’ are merely records of positions on such a scale. (shrink)

Contextualists and assessment relativists neglect the expressive dimension of assertoric discourse that seems to give rise to faultless disagreement. Discourse that generates the intuition makes public an attitudinal conflict, and the affective -expressive dimension of the contributing utterances accounts for it. The FD-phenomenon is an effect of a public dispute generated by a sequence of expressing opposite attitudes towards a salient object or state of affairs, where the protagonists are making an attempt to persuade the other side into joining the (...) other’s camp. (shrink)

After contrasting obscurantism with bullshit, we explore some ways in which obscurantism is typically justified by investigating a notorious test-case: defences of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Obscurantism abuses the reader's natural sense of curiosity and interpretive charity with the promise of deep and profound insights about a designated subject matter that is often vague or elusive. When the attempt to understand what the speaker means requires excessive hermeneutic efforts, interpreters are reluctant to halt their quest for meaning. We diagnose this as a (...) case of psychological loss aversion, in particular, the aversion to acknowledging that there was no hidden meaning after all, or that whatever meaning found was projected onto the text by the reader herself. (shrink)

Social constructivist approaches to science have often been dismissed as inaccurate accounts of scientific knowledge. In this article, we take the claims of robust social constructivism (SC) seriously and attempt to find a theory which does instantiate the epistemic predicament as described by SC. We argue that Freudian psychoanalysis, in virtue of some of its well-known epistemic complications and conceptual confusions, provides a perfect illustration of what SC claims is actually going on in science. In other words, the features SC (...) mistakenly ascribes to science in general correctly characterize the epistemic status of Freudian psychoanalysis. This sheds some light on the internal disputes in the field of psychoanalysis, on the sociology of psychoanalytic movement, and on the “war” that has been waged over Freud's legacy with his critics. In addition, our analysis offers an indirect and independent argument against SC as an account of bona fide science, by illustrating what science would look like if it were to function as SC claims it does. (shrink)

By focussing on the intentional character of observation in science, we argue that Constructive Empiricism—B.C. van Fraassen’s much debated and explored view of science—is inconsistent. We then argue there are at least two ways out of our Inconsistency Argument, one of which is more easily to square with Constructive Empiricism than the other.

Declarations like “this meeting is adjourned” make certain facts the case by representing them as being the case. Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to the mechanism whereby the utterance of a declaration can bring about a new state of affairs. In this paper, we use the incentivization account of institutional facts to address this issue. We argue that declarations can serve to bring about new states of affairs as their utterance have game theoretical import, typically in virtue of (...) the utterer signaling a commitment to act in an incentive-changing way. (shrink)

In our earlier work, we argued, contra Searle, that institutional facts can be understood in terms of non-institutional facts about actions and incentives. Butchard and D’Amico claim that we have misinterpreted Searle, that our main argument against him has no merit and that our positive view cannot account for institutional facts created via joint action. We deny all three charges.

In 2002, Luciano Floridi published a paper called What is the Philosophy of Information?, where he argues for a new paradigm in philosophical research. To what extent should his proposal be accepted? Is the Philosophy of Information actually a new paradigm, in the Kuhninan sense, in Philosophy? Or is it only a new branch of Epistemology? In our discussion we will argue in defense of Floridi’s proposal. We believe that Philosophy of Information has the types of features had by other (...) areas already acknowledge as authentic in Philosophy. By way of an analogical argument we will argue that since Philosophy of Information has its own topics, method and problems it would be counter-intuitive not to accept it as a new philosophical area. To strengthen our position we present and discuss main topics of Philosophy of Information. (shrink)

We present an inference to the best explanation of the immense cultural success of Freudian psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic method. We argue that an account of psychoanalytic facts as products of unintended declarative speech acts explains this phenomenon. Our argument connects diverse, seemingly independent characteristics of psychoanalysis that have been independently confirmed, and applies key features of John Searle’s and Eerik Lagerspetz’s theory of institutional facts to the psychoanalytic edifice. We conclude with a brief defence of the institutional approach against (...) more contentious social constructivist approaches to science and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

SummaryExternalism in philosophy of mind is usually taken to be faced with the following difficulty: from the fact that meanings are externally individuated, it follows that the subjective character of mental states and events becomes problematic. On the basis of a well‐founded approach to similar problems in the philosophy of action, I propose a solution based on two connected issues: we should think of mental states not as beliefs, but as states of knowledge, and thought experiments, designed to strip off (...) the contribution of the world from the subject's contribution to the contents of his mental states, are doomed to fail. The allegedly subjective character of propositional contentful states is that they are agent‐specific states. Agent‐specificity is not in contradiction with mental states or intentional actions having a circumstantial nature. (shrink)

In zijn jongste boek, Kritiek van de interpreterende rede, bekijkt Filip Buekens de centrale thema's in de taalfilosofie van Davidson. Vertrekkend vanuit de stelling dat spreken en verstaan een vorm van rationeel handelen is, wordt onderzocht hoe een theorie voor een taal (in de vorm van een Tarskiaanse waarheidstheorie) wordt geconstrueerd vanuit het standpunt van een 'radicale interpretator' die inzicht wil krijgen in het talig handelen van personen. In een uitgebreide vergelijking met de filosofie van Michael Dummett en W.V. Quine (...) worden de specifieke uitgangspunten van Davidson verhelderd. Daarbij gaat vooral aandacht naar de constitutieve principes die het verstaan van anderen en het begrijpelijk zijn voor anderen mogelijk maken. Davidson verbindt aan dit project belangrijke metafysische conclusies. Deze worden uitgebreid toegelicht. Zo bespreekt de auteur de anti-sceptische argumenten van Davidson, het probleem van de onbepaaldheid van de referentie-relatie en Davidson's afwijzing van het relativisme. In een laatste hoofdstuk wordt de filosofie van Davidson getoetst aan belangrijke taalfilosofische discussies die de jongste jaren gevoerd werden: essentialisme, het volgen van regels, het probleem van de lingu. (shrink)

In this essay, I show how semantic theories in contemporary philosophy of language shed light on questions about the meaning of life. Current semantic theories tend to defend various forms of holism in semantics: the meaning of a word or sentence is explained by its place in a pattern of sentences, a framework, or a language . A second feature of these theories is that semantic holism rejects the idea that we understand words and sentences on the basis of a (...) pre-established theory which can be applied to cases. Meaning and understanding always involve interpretation and languages are dynamic idiolects rather than fixed systems of communication. This connects semantics with various forms of particularism in ethics. I show how semantic particularism can be applied to questions were ‘meaning’ is used in its ’existential’ sense . The semantic and existential meaning of ’meaning’ have analogous functions. (shrink)

In this paper, we distinguish two different approaches to cultural evolution. One approach is meme-centered, the other organism-centered. We argue that in situations in which the meme- and organism-centered approaches are competing alternatives, the organism-centered approach is in many ways superior. Furthermore, the organism-centered approach can go a long way toward understanding the evolution of institutions. Although the organism-centered approach is preferable for a broad class of situations, we do leave room for super-organismic or sub-organismic explanations of some cultural phenomena.