Defense of an account of intrinsic properties in terms of (what is now called) grounding rather than naturalness.

John Searle’s argument that social-scientific laws are impossible depends on a special open-ended feature of social kinds. We demonstrate that under a noncontentious understanding of bridging principles the so-called "counts-as" relation, found in the expression "X counts as Y in (context) C," provides a bridging principle for social kinds. If we are correct, not only are social-scientific laws possible, but the "counts as" relation might provide a more perspicuous formulation for candidate bridge principles.

In two articles, Smits, Buekens, and du Plessis have argued that John Searle’s account of institutional facts suffers serious flaws and should be replaced with a reductive account they call “incentivization.” We argue against their view in two ways. First, the specific flaws they find in Searle are based on misunderstandings. Second, “incentivization,” as they present it, fails as a reduction of strict collective actions and, thus, cannot account for institutional facts such as money or property.

In a previous article, we challenged the “incentivization view” held by J. P. Smit, Filip Buekens, and Stan du Plessis as failing to cover social phenomena involving strict joint actions. The authors’ response to our criticism seriously misstates our main point. We have therefore, as briefly and sharply as we can, restated the problem in this note.

In response to "‘Counting As’ a Bridge Principle: Against Searle Against Social-Scientific Laws," Elijah Weber distinguishes two sorts of physical open-endedness and claims our article appeals to the wrong sort. We clarify that Searle’s notion of physical open-endedness is neither of the notions Weber introduces, thus our original reply to Searle is not targeted by Weber’s objections. Also, Weber’s lengthy example concerning counterfeit currency appears to build-in the extremely contentious assumption that scientific laws are impossible if and when relevant conditions (...) do not happen to obtain. (shrink)