How do the things inside people’s heads create the world we live in? This is the question that has always interested me. A couple years ago I decided that this question bugs me enough to make me want to go to school for six or seven more years. So I started thinking about how I might go about researching it.
The first question that arises at the beginning of a research project is that of ontology: what is it, exactly, we are studying? What is the actual thing we seek to examine? Can it be observed? Measured? Seeing as I was interested in ideas and international relations, I delved into constructivist theory to try to find answers.
While reading the theoretical portion of Vincent Pouliot’s excellent dissertation on Security Communities and NATO/Russian relations, I noticed in the references a name I had never seen before: John Searle. Upon discovering The Construction of Social Reality (and at this point, my quest was so intense that I really did feel as though I had made an earth-shattering discovery) I felt as though my questions would finally be answered and I would be able to begin my constructivist research.
In The Construction, John Searle is concerned with two things: brute facts and social facts. Brute facts are ontologically and epistemically objective, that is, their existence does not depend on human existence and their features cannot be manipulated by human beings in service of some particular way of thinking. The law of gravity is an objective fact: it existed long before humans arrived on the scene and carries certain innate features which humans can learn about.
But what about marriages? Or loan contracts? Or the Constitution of the United States of America? Or, really, everything social scientists study? These, Searle argues, are social facts, in that they exist only in virtue of the fact that human beings recognize their existence. This makes them ontologically subjective.
The fact that social facts are ontologically subjective— i.e, they really only “exist” in peoples’ minds (it’s not as if the piece of paper itself on which the Constitution is written enforces checks and balances)— makes them fundamentally different from brute facts. But there is one question left to answer: are social facts epistemically objective?
Searle’s answer is that social facts are in fact epistemically objective. To paraphrase a comment made by a sociologist, Searle’s analysis “ends where social science starts.” This phrase didn’t make sense to me for a long time. I now realise that’s because I was in denial. I was reluctant to admit that social facts could truly be epistemically objective. I think this was so, primarily, because of the phrasing of the original question I had sought to answer: how do the things inside people’s heads create the world we live in?
It implies that the things inside people’s heads are each second of every day constructing— literally building— the social world around them, and this process seemed to me like one that could change social relations at any time. It seemed that because the social world was in a continual state of becoming instead of static being that an entire empire could dissolve in a matter of months or even days if only enough people stopped believing in its existence. I believed this because it actually happened in 1989.
What I did not fully appreciate, however, was that even though the social world required the constant building efforts of its human participants— or, as Searle would put it, that people must have collective intentionality toward social and institutional facts— this does not mean social facts cannot have the same sort of epistemological objectivity as brute facts.
Take, for example, 2 + 2. A quick way of demonstrating brute facts’ epistemic objectivity is that 2 + 2 = 4 whether you like it or not. You might be of the opinion that 2 + 2 actually = 5. But you would be wrong.
This is where I got caught up. I was never convinced that the social world could be subjected to the same sort of analysis that says 2 + 2 = 4 and definitely, unequivocally, 100%, without a doubt, does not = 5. It seemed ridiculous.
And yet, I began to realize that the most important argument of The Construction is not that human beings construct the world around them— sociologists have been insisting on exactly that since at least the 1960s— but that social facts are really, truly epistemically objective. They actually exist outside of any one human being’s control and can be measured, observed and analysed.
In other words, what Searle and The Construction of Social Reality allowed me to see was that even though they only exist in our heads, social facts are just as real as brute facts and hence can be analyzed using all types of formal analysis, ranging from rational choice theory to econometrics to game theory.
Does this mean that I think ideas don’t matter? Of course not. More than ever I am still guided by my original research question: how do the things inside people’s heads create the world we live in?
So in a way I am right back where I started. The same basic question still bugs me. But at least now I am on firmer footing.
The first question that arises at the beginning of a research project is that of ontology: what is it, exactly, we are studying? What is the actual thing we seek to examine? Can it be observed? Measured? Seeing as I was interested in ideas and international relations, I delved into constructivist theory to try to find answers.
While reading the theoretical portion of Vincent Pouliot’s excellent dissertation on Security Communities and NATO/Russian relations, I noticed in the references a name I had never seen before: John Searle. Upon discovering The Construction of Social Reality (and at this point, my quest was so intense that I really did feel as though I had made an earth-shattering discovery) I felt as though my questions would finally be answered and I would be able to begin my constructivist research.
In The Construction, John Searle is concerned with two things: brute facts and social facts. Brute facts are ontologically and epistemically objective, that is, their existence does not depend on human existence and their features cannot be manipulated by human beings in service of some particular way of thinking. The law of gravity is an objective fact: it existed long before humans arrived on the scene and carries certain innate features which humans can learn about.
But what about marriages? Or loan contracts? Or the Constitution of the United States of America? Or, really, everything social scientists study? These, Searle argues, are social facts, in that they exist only in virtue of the fact that human beings recognize their existence. This makes them ontologically subjective.
The fact that social facts are ontologically subjective— i.e, they really only “exist” in peoples’ minds (it’s not as if the piece of paper itself on which the Constitution is written enforces checks and balances)— makes them fundamentally different from brute facts. But there is one question left to answer: are social facts epistemically objective?
Searle’s answer is that social facts are in fact epistemically objective. To paraphrase a comment made by a sociologist, Searle’s analysis “ends where social science starts.” This phrase didn’t make sense to me for a long time. I now realise that’s because I was in denial. I was reluctant to admit that social facts could truly be epistemically objective. I think this was so, primarily, because of the phrasing of the original question I had sought to answer: how do the things inside people’s heads create the world we live in?
It implies that the things inside people’s heads are each second of every day constructing— literally building— the social world around them, and this process seemed to me like one that could change social relations at any time. It seemed that because the social world was in a continual state of becoming instead of static being that an entire empire could dissolve in a matter of months or even days if only enough people stopped believing in its existence. I believed this because it actually happened in 1989.
What I did not fully appreciate, however, was that even though the social world required the constant building efforts of its human participants— or, as Searle would put it, that people must have collective intentionality toward social and institutional facts— this does not mean social facts cannot have the same sort of epistemological objectivity as brute facts.
Take, for example, 2 + 2. A quick way of demonstrating brute facts’ epistemic objectivity is that 2 + 2 = 4 whether you like it or not. You might be of the opinion that 2 + 2 actually = 5. But you would be wrong.
This is where I got caught up. I was never convinced that the social world could be subjected to the same sort of analysis that says 2 + 2 = 4 and definitely, unequivocally, 100%, without a doubt, does not = 5. It seemed ridiculous.
And yet, I began to realize that the most important argument of The Construction is not that human beings construct the world around them— sociologists have been insisting on exactly that since at least the 1960s— but that social facts are really, truly epistemically objective. They actually exist outside of any one human being’s control and can be measured, observed and analysed.
In other words, what Searle and The Construction of Social Reality allowed me to see was that even though they only exist in our heads, social facts are just as real as brute facts and hence can be analyzed using all types of formal analysis, ranging from rational choice theory to econometrics to game theory.
Does this mean that I think ideas don’t matter? Of course not. More than ever I am still guided by my original research question: how do the things inside people’s heads create the world we live in?
So in a way I am right back where I started. The same basic question still bugs me. But at least now I am on firmer footing.
