Nya perspektiv på social ontologi - flov.gu.se€¦ · Web viewInstitutional Objects,...
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Institutional Objects, Reductionism, and Theories of Persistence
Tobias Hansson Wahlberg
Lund University
DRAFT!
Abstract:
This paper addresses the issue whether institutional objects can be identified with
physical objects that have been ascribed certain status functions, as advocated e.g. by
John Searle in The Construction of Social Reality (1995). It argues that the prospect for
such identification hinges on how objects persist – i.e. whether they endure, perdure or
exdure through time.
1. Introduction
In day-to-day life, we routinely quantify over and refer to institutional objects such as nation-
states, governments, laws, corporations, currencies, contracts, etc. The ontological status of
institutional objects is far from straightforward, however. One reason for being puzzled about
their mode of being is this: If humanity were to disappear, or if we just stopped thinking that
there are nation-states, corporations and dollar bills, arguably there would no longer be (in
whatever sense they “are”) any entities of these kinds.1 Contrast this sort of mind-dependence
with the mode of existence of stars, animals and electrons (natural objects), or bricks, pieces
of paper and cups (artefacts). If we all went into a permanent coma, still there would be stars,
pieces of paper and cups.2 Artefacts may be mind-dependent in the sense that their coming-
into-being is in need of intentional thought, not only causally, but logically (Hilpinen, 2004;
Thomasson, 2007); but institutional objects seem to be mind-dependent, logically, in a
stronger way: some kind of ongoing representational activity appears needed in order for there
to be nation-states, corporations and dollar bills.3 Moreover, typical institutional objects seem
1 Compare the thought experiment offered by Searle (1995, p. 11), although his rough-and-ready test involves the idea that there had never been any human or sentient beings. 2 Mereological Nihilists (e.g. Wheeler, 1979) deny that there are any composite macroscopic objects; according to them there are only mereological simples. (Some more moderate nihilists allow that there are animate composites, e.g. van Inwagen, 1990a.) Global constructivists (Goodman, 1978, and Rorty, 1979, are candidates) and idealists (e.g. Berkeley, 1734/1998) think that all of external reality is constructed or mind-dependent. In this paper I will simply take for granted that nihilism, global constructivism and idealism are false doctrines.3 Searle can be read as suggesting that there is no distinction between institutional objects and artefacts in this regard (1995, pp. 11, 20-1). If he does hold this I think he is wrong; more about this issue below.
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to require social recognition, not merely the recognition of a single individual – wherefore the
study of their mode of being is often referred to as “social ontology” (see e.g. Thomasson,
2003; Searle, 2010).
What, then, is the ontological status of institutional objects? Do they exist “out
there” in the external world, or are they merely some sort of shared mental constructs or
useful fictions? If they exist in the external world, how are they related to the mind-
independent aspects of reality? Can they be reduced to, i.e. identified with, natural objects or
artefacts that have been ascribed certain functions? Or are they sui generis entities that
supervene on natural/artefactual objects and human attitudes? (For simplicity, in what follows
I will often refer to natural objects and artefacts as mind-independent or brute, but the reader
should bear in mind that some artefacts may be mind-dependent in the way indicated above.)
Some writers apparently hold that a single answer will do for all sorts of institutional objects
(e.g. Searle, 1995). I find it prima facie plausible, however, that different answers are called
for depending on what specific kind of institutional object is in question (compare prime
ministers with complex international organizations like the E.U.).
In this paper, I investigate the tenability and scope of the externalist, reductive
view, more specifically as it is defended by John Searle in his (1995). I join Amie Thomasson
(2003) and others in arguing that although the theory is plausible in relation to institutional
objects such as dollar bills and presidents, the position is in trouble in relation to other kinds
of institutional objects. I show that the problematic class of institutional objects is larger than
is typically envisaged – e.g. by latter-day Searle (2006; 2010) who has made some
amendments to his original theory, due to the criticism of Thomasson and others. At least, the
class is larger as long as the commonsensical endurance theory of persistence (also known as
three-dimensionalism) is presumed, as it typically is (albeit tacitly) by current social
ontologists. My argument relies on Leibniz’s Law (LL) and I defend its applicability to
institutional objects against scepticism of such application that might arise due to certain
remarks made by Searle. I moreover discuss, and illustrate in some detail, how externalist
reductionism fares in the light of some currently popular revisionary theories of persistence:
the perdurance and stage theories (which are varieties of four-dimensionalism). I argue that
the prospect for externalist reductionism improves if either of these theories is adopted, but
that the improvement comes with certain costs.
Interestingly, it has since long been appreciated within the philosophy of
material constitution (i.e. constitution of natural objects and artefacts) that theories of
persistence are relevant to issues of reduction and supervenience (see e.g. Rea, 1997; Sider,
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2001). Such considerations have as of yet to be applied to the metaphysics of institutional
objects, however. This paper aims at remedying this oversight and initiating such
philosophizing.
2. Institutional objects as reducible
In this section I focus on John Searle’s formulation of the externalist, reductive view, in
particular as it is defended in his seminal book The Construction of Social Reality (1995).
(The externalist, reductive position will from now on be referred to as “the reductive view” or
“reductionism”.) Searle’s 1995-theory is the most developed version of reductionism that I
know of and it has been highly influential. However, the principal difficulties identified are
applicable, I think, to any version of reductionism. (As indicated in Section 1, Searle has to
some extent restricted his reductionism in later writings (Searle 2006; 2010); I explain how
and why in Section 3.)
According to Searle, institutional concepts, such as “dollar bill”, “professor” and
“president”, are self-referential. By a self-referential concept he means a concept F such that
it is analytically true that for an object a – existing in the external world – to fall under it a has
to be believed to be, or regarded as or treated as, an F (Searle, 1995, pp. 32-4).4 Thus, on this
view, being represented as an F is logically prior to being an F (ibid., p. 13). Searle takes the
phenomenon of self-referentiality to explain our intuition that institutional objects are mind-
dependent: there would not be any Fs in the world if we did not think that there are any (cf. p.
33). He allows, however, that an object a can be of institutional kind F without it being
thought to be an F (i.e. without us having singular attitudes about a) – but in such cases,
Searle holds, we are accepting some general rule to the effect that all entities x, having certain
features G, H, I... (exemplified by a), count as instances of F, whereby they are Fs (pp. 32-3,
46).5 Hence, professors and dollar bills are indeed external objects, but their being professors
and dollar bills is not intrinsic to them; this is a status that is assigned to them (pp. 9-13).
Moreover, Searle maintains that institutional concepts express “status functions”
(pp. 40-1). Status functions are functions such that they could not be performed or had by an
object just in virtue of the object’s physical properties and abilities (if it has any) but go
beyond them; they presuppose the assignment of a new status to the object that is to perform
4 He denies that the idea involves vicious circularity (ibid., pp. 52-3). 5 For example, if a certain dollar bill has fallen from the printing presses into the cracks of the floor, and has never been thought of as a dollar bill, nevertheless it is a dollar bill and not just a piece of paper, because of a general rule applying to it (ibid., p. 32).
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the function in question.6 Typically, status functions involve, either directly or indirectly, what
Searle calls deontic or conventional powers: rights, responsibilities, obligations, duties,
entitlements, etc. (pp. 100, 104-5).7 A bearer of a dollar bill, for example, has the right to use
it for payment in the U.S., because dollar bills are legal tender in the U.S. Moreover, Searle
seems to regard the observer-relative “status” and its associated status function as being so
intimately connected that in many cases he simply speaks of “status functions” rather than
“statuses” and their associated “status functions”. In what follows I will adopt this way of
speaking. Consequently, I will say that a predicate such as “being president of the U.S.”
expresses a status function rather than say it expresses a status with an associated status
function. (In many cases it seems that a status is in fact defined in terms of its status function
– for example, to be president of the U.S. is simply to have a certain status function, i.e. to
have certain deontic powers.)
Since status functions go beyond the sheer physics of objects they must,
according to Searle, be continuously assigned or accepted in order to be successfully had and
performed (p. 45). That is, it is not enough that we assign the status function to some object
once and then forget about the function, in order for the status function to be instantiated over
time.8
When assigning a certain status function to some object(s), we are applying or
accepting (if we are not inventing) some specific constitutive rule, or a system of such rules
6 It should be noted, however, that for Searle, all functions are “observer-relative” in that they are teleologically, not just causally, defined. Nevertheless, he accepts that many functions can be performed simply in virtue of objects’ physical properties, ones a goal or value has been specified (pp. 14-5). For example, a heart causes blood to flow through a body and relative to the goal of survival it “functions” to pump blood (this is a “nonagentive” function on Searle’s terminology); a corkscrew has certain physical characteristics and in virtue of these it can be used for unscrewing corks (an “agentive function”) (p. 20). Status functions form a special sub-class of functions whose members are, so to speak, further removed from the mind-independent aspects of reality: they may even be arbitrarily related to the physics of the things in question – fiat money being a telling example, according to Searle (pp. 40-2).7 For criticism of the step from functions to deontic powers, see Tuomela (1997); for Searle’s reply, see Searle (1997).8 In spite of his view of non-institutional agentive functions as not going beyond the sheer physics of things (apart from the teleological part) Searle seems to maintain that they too have to be continuously assigned in order to be had over time (Searle, 1995, pp. 11, 20-1). The exact reason for this is not made entirely clear, however. I would maintain, in any case, that the concepts expressed by predicates such as “is an urn” and the concepts expressed by predicates such as “functions as an urn” should be kept apart. The first kind of concept only seems to require a past or present imposition of some agentive function, while the latter may require, if Searle is correct, the present assignment of the agentive function in question. Thus, I think that when an archeologist discovers an old artefact it can be true to say that the artefact is (present tense) an urn, even though it has not been used or assigned the agentive function functions as an urn for centuries. It would be true to say this because the artefact was designed for the purpose of functioning as an urn – not because the archaeologist now assigns this agentive function to the object. Such a past assignment does not seem to be enough for the satisfaction of institutional kind concepts. A person who only used to be counted as a prime minister no longer is a prime minister (although it is true to say that the person is a former prime minister); an expired dollar bill is no longer a valid dollar bill (it is merely a former dollar bill). It appears, then, that artefactual and institutional kind concepts are different in this respect.
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(pp. 27-8). Constitutive rules should be distinguished from mere regulative rules, Searle
maintains (ibid.). The latter rules regulate activities that can exist without the rules.
Constitutive rules, on the other hand, create the possibility of a new kind of activity, fact or
object. For example, according to Searle, the constitutive rules of chess (“such and such a
move counts as a legal pawn move”) create the possibility of chess playing, which is a
different activity from merely moving pieces of wood on a board (even if the latter
movements are indistinguishable from genuine chess moves, i.e. moves intentionally
governed by the constitutive rules of chess).9
Constitutive rules characteristically have the following form (p. 28; see also
Searle, 1969, pp. 33-7, for a general discussion):
X counts as Y in context C.
In the case of institutional objects (Searle, 1995, p. 44), the X term is a placeholder for an
expression referring to some object (or type of object), the Y term is a placeholder for an
expression expressing some status function, while the C term specifies the context in which
the “counts as” holds (if the status function is not conferred across contexts).10 For example,
on Searle’s view, the predicate “being a dollar bill” expresses a status function which is
assigned to certain pieces of paper issued by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing under the
authority of the U.S. Treasury; these bits of paper count as dollar bills, and thereby they are
dollar bills. Thus, the existence of dollar bills is dependent on the acceptance of some non-
empty set of constitutive rules (pp. 45-6). And since “an institution is a system of constitutive
rules” (Searle, 2010, p. 10) dollar bills are aptly called “institutional objects” (cf. Searle,
1995, p. 44).11
In the example above the status function being a dollar bill is assigned to an
artefact (a piece of paper), which is a mind-independent object (see Section 1). Searle holds,
9 See also Searle’s examples of people accidently going through the moves of American football (Searle, 1969, pp. 35-6) and unconscious robots behaving as if they had money (Searle, 2010, pp. 135-7). As an example of a regulative rule Searle mentions “drive on the right-hand side of the road” (Searle, 1995, p. 27); driving can exist without such rules. The distinction between regulative and constitutive rules is criticized by Ruben (1997); for Searle’s reply, see Searle (1997).10 If the term in the X-position denotes an event or a process we get an institutional event/process, e.g. a marriage or an election. In this paper I am exclusively concerned with the creation of institutional kinds of objects.11 Notice that Searle cannot, somewhat paradoxically, hold that institutions themselves (i.e. systems of constitutive rules) are institutional entities. At the very least, he cannot hold this of all institutions. Not every institution can depend for its existence on constitutive rules, on pain of an infinite regress of constitutive rules. It should be noted, though, that Searle is not very consistent in his use of “institution”. In his (2010, p. 91) he cites examples of institutions which clearly are not just systems of constitutive rules, but rather institutional objects: baseball teams, hospitals, universities, restaurants, governments, corporations, etc.
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however, that the formula may be iterated (ibid., p. 80) so that a new status function is
assigned to an object which already is an institutional object, i.e. an object which has already
been assigned a status function. For example, the status function being president of the U.S.
may be assigned to (and only to) a citizen of the U.S. Searle insists, however, that such chains
of status function assignments must be grounded in, or start off with, mind-independent, brute
objects (pp. 55-6, 121).
In what sense, now, is this account reductive? It is reductive in that it identifies
institutional objects with brute ones. An institutional object is not an entity over and above a
brute object: an institutional object neither supervenes on, nor is it constituted12 by, a brute
object. Rather, an institutional object is numerically identical with a brute object. Of course,
not every brute object is an institutional one, on this scheme of things. Only those brute
objects that have been assigned a status function are institutional objects. More precisely, only
those brute objects that have been assigned a status function of a sort that defines and yields
an institutional kind of object – e.g. a professor, a dollar bill – are institutional objects.13 But it
is important to realize that the assignment of such a status function to a brute object does not,
on this account, create a new particular object that exist “on top” of the brute one, although
the status function as such is an institutional addition to the brute object. What happens is just
that a pre-existing object acquires a new status function, with the result that the pre-existing
object becomes a new kind of object (a dollar bill say, in addition to being a piece of paper).14
Thus, on Searle’s theory, an institutional object is identical neither with the conjunction or
sum of a brute object X and a status function Y, nor with the fact that X is a Y (X’s being a
Y). If any of these positions were endorsed, then the institutional object would be regarded as
containing the brute object as a proper part or constituent.15 But then it would not be the brute
X-object that counts as a Y and consequently is a Y. The institutional object would be
something over and above the X-object (although arguably overlapping it). But Searle
explicitly says that the constitutive formula is of the form X counts as Y.
12 In the sense of “constituted” discussed by e.g. Johnston (1992/1997) and Wiggins (2001), according to whom constitution is not identity.13 Consequently, brute objects that have only been ascribed a status function which is just an institutional property – i.e. not a kind or sortal property – do not qualify as institutional objects; they are mere brute objects that in addition have, what might be called, a “characterizing” institutional property. A candidate for being such a characterizing institutional property is being insolvent. I elaborate somewhat on this Aristotelian-Lockean distinction (see e.g. Strawson, 1959, pp. 168-9; Wiggins, 2001, pp. 8-9) below; the distinction is not explicitly made by Searle himself. 14 Of course, it may be that in some cases the status function is assigned simultaneously with the creation of the brute X-object. 15 For a discussion of the metaphysics of facts or states of affairs, see e.g. Armstrong (1997).
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For the same reason I think it would be a mistake to interpret Searle as saying
that institutional objects exist partly in our minds (this is why I refer to his view as externalist,
see Introduction). Searle does sometimes write things such as “the attitude we take toward the
phenomenon is partly constitutive of the phenomenon” (Searle, 1995, p. 33; my emphasis);
but I think this is simply a misleading and unfortunate way of expressing the idea that
institutional phenomena are mind-dependent. The thesis is that there would not be any
institutional (kinds of) objects unless we thought there were any – but this claim does not
entail the position that proper parts of institutional objects exist in our minds. If the relevant
X-objects (e.g. certain pieces of paper) exist outside our heads, i.e. do not overlap with our
brains/minds, then the relevant institutional objects (dollar bills) exist wholly outside our
minds. This is because it is only the X-objects (pieces of paper) that are counted as
institutional objects (dollar bills), not the X-objects + our representations of institutional
objects. Thus, if I have a dollar bill in my pocket, I do not have a part of it in my head; the
dollar bill itself is wholly outside my mind. True, institutional concepts are relational, even if
monadic, in the sense that they involve the idea that their satisfiers stand in certain relations to
people having certain attitudes towards them; but that does not entail that their satisfiers
somehow extend beyond themselves into the minds of the people holding the attitudes. The
monadic predicate “is a father” is clearly relational, but that does not mean that the members
of its extension somehow extend beyond themselves to their children.
Thus, I read Searle as holding that a dollar bill simply is a piece of paper –
namely, a piece of paper (an X-object) which counts as a dollar bill (has status function Y). If
we name the dollar bill “a”, and the piece of paper which is counted as a dollar bill “b”, we
have two co-referential names, referring to a single thing. Again, a is not an entity over and
above b (e.g. b + status function Y). It is b (= a) which is counted as a dollar bill, and which
consequently falls under the predicate “is a dollar bill”. Likewise, the president of the U.S. is
identical with a certain U.S. citizen who counts as the president of the U.S.; and the U.S.
citizen is identical with a specific human being who counts as a U.S. citizen. In the end, the
president of the U.S. simply is a human being (Barack Obama) who counts as the president of
the U.S. Thus we have: the 44th president of the U.S = Barack Obama. Since the chain of
identities (if there is a chain) must terminate in mind-independent objects on this theory,
institutional objects are in the end reduced to (in the sense of identified with) mind-
independent ones (cf. Smith, 2003b, p. 18).
I realize that Searle does not call himself a reductionist about institutional
objects. But as far as I can see, this refusal stems from the fact that he denies that the
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intentional acts of imposing status functions to objects are reducible. First, he holds that such
acts typically are in the “we-mode” rather than in the “I-mode”, and that we-mode
intentionality cannot be reduced to I-mode intentionality (pp. 23-26). Second, intentional
states cannot, according to Searle, be reduced to brain-states, although they are realized in the
brain (Searle, 1983). But an irreducibility stance towards intentionality can be combined with
the view that institutional objects are identical with mind-independent ones (namely those that
have been ascribed status functions). It is because Searle is committed to the latter thesis that I
call his theory reductive.16
Moreover, I am fully aware that Searle, in his response to one of Barry Smith’s
critical articles (Smith, 2003a), expresses dissatisfaction with generic talk about institutional
objects (a category which encompasses entities such as presidents, dollar bills, lawyers, etc.)
in contrast to generic talk about institutional and social facts (encompassing “entities” such as
the fact that Barack Obama is the president of the U.S.) (Searle, 2003). But this dissatisfaction
seems to stem from the fact that talk of institutional objects can give the impression that we
are discussing a class of objects which are distinct from mind-independent ones – which they
for Searle empathetically are not.
He writes:
In my hand I hold an object. This one and the same object is both a piece of paper
and a dollar bill. As a piece of paper it is a non-social object; as a dollar bill it is a
social [institutional17] object. So which is it? The answer, of course, is that it is
both. But to say that is to say that we do not have a separate class of objects that we
can identify with the notion of social object. Rather, what we have to say is that
something is social object only under certain descriptions [e.g. when described as a
dollar bill] and not others [when described as a piece of paper] 18 […] Thus there is
only one object that is both a piece of paper and a dollar bill, but the fact that it is a
piece of paper is not the same fact as that it is a dollar bill, even though they are
16 Again, at this stage of the paper I am referring to Searle’s pre-2006 view – that is, before he accepted “free-standing Y terms”; see the next section for Searle’s revised view.17 In his response to Smith, Searle is using the wider term “social object”, presumably because that is the expression used by Smith in his critical article.18 Searle here appears to be suggesting that an object is a social/institutional object only under certain descriptions. This is unnecessarily defensive (unless he just means that an object is institutional relative to an acceptance of a constitutive rule). I do not think he needs to relativize this status to descriptions. Given that the object is accepted as having a certain status function it is an institutional object, period. There is no contradiction involved in saying that the object is both mind-independent and institutional. For the same reason, I do not think Searle should write “The open sentence ‘X is a social object’ is not extensional with respect to substitutability” (Searle, 2003, p. 303). For more on this issue, see Section 4.
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both facts about one and the same object. […] Again, when I am alone in my room,
that room contains at least the following “social objects”: a citizen of the United
States, an employee of the State of California, a licensed driver, and a taxpayer. So
how many objects are in the room? There is exactly one: me. (Searle, 2003, pp.
302-303, my emphasis)
It seems to me, then, that in his 2003-article Searle disavows the notion of institutional object
in favour of institutional fact because he wants to forestall what he takes to be a misconceived
picture of institutional reality: what is true, according to Searle, is that institutional facts are
distinct from brute facts; not that institutional objects are distinct from brute objects. It should
be noticed that in The Construction of Social Reality (1995), and in papers after his 2003-
paper, Searle allows himself to talk quite freely of social and institutional objects. Here are
some examples:
I said that the form of the constitutive rule was “X counts as Y in C”; but as I am
using this locution, that only determines a set of institutional facts and institutional
objects where the Y term names something more than the sheer physical features of
the object named by the X term (1995, p. 43-44). Such material objects as are
involved in institutional reality, e.g., bits of paper, are objects like any others, but
the imposition of status-functions on these objects create a level of description
where it is an institutional object, e.g., a twenty dollar bill. The object is no
different; rather, a new status with an accompanying function has been assigned to
an old object […] (1995, p. 57) We are talking about the mode of existence of
social objects such as the United States of America, the San Francisco Niners
football team, the University of California and the Squaw Valley Property Owners
Association (2006, p. 12)
Indeed, as I have indicated above, I think Searle is committed to the existence of institutional
objects – even if he regards institutional facts as being in some sense more fundamental than
institutional objects, and he sometimes speaks sceptically (but incoherently, I think) of
institutional objects as being “just placeholders for patterns of activities” (Searle, 1995, p. 57).
By (collectively) ascribing a certain status function F to a mind-independent object a an
institutional fact is created, that a is F, or that a is an F. But notice that if (and this is the
normal case) the term “F” expresses a status function that defines an institutional kind of
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object (roughly, if the term is a count-noun and not just an adjective), then “F” prescribes
what sort or kind of object a is. And if a is prescribed as being an institutional kind of object
(a president, say), then a is an institutional kind of object (i.e., it is not merely a mind-
independent object having a “characterizing” institutional property, cf. Strawson, 1959, p.
168). If so, a is both an institutional and a mind-independent object: it falls under two
different sorts of kind terms, “president” (an institutional kind term) and “human being” (a
brute kind term).19
3. Difficulties with the reductive view
Reductionism is plausible, I think, in relation to the kind of examples discussed by Searle in
his pre-2006 writings on institutional reality. We do think of institutional objects such as
dollar bills, presidents and lawyers as concrete entities that can be seen, touched and heard,
and as having the same physical properties as their underlying “realizers”. We even take them
to have the same temporal properties as their realizers. If some person x becomes a barrister,
we do not regard this event as involving the creation of a new particular object. The age of the
person and the age of the barrister are taken to be the same. Likewise, if the person would
cease to be a barrister in the future, we would not regard this as the death or ceasing to be of
an institutional object, the barrister. Prima facie, the current referent of “the barrister”, i.e. the
person, would still exist, although no longer as a barrister – i.e. she would no longer satisfy
the present-tensed “is a barrister”, but she would still be in existence. Because the barrister
and the person prima facie have the same properties, LL (the principle that says that if entities
a and b are numerically identical, then whatever is true of a is true of b and vice versa) does
not seem to be a threat to their identification – i.e. reductionism appears plausible for such
cases.
If reductionism holds for all institutional objects, then there are no institutional
objects which go in and out of existence due to human attitudes and decisions. What happens,
rather, is that certain mind-independent objects begin and cease to satisfy certain relational
predicates (the institutional ones) due to human attitudes and decisions (or the absence
thereof). For example, if humanity were to disappear or stopped thinking that there are dollar
bills there would no longer be any dollar bills (i.e. there would no longer be any objects of
that kind), but the particular pieces of paper that once were the dollar bills (i.e. the entities that
19 Entity a will no doubt fall under other kind terms as well: “person”, “female” (or “male”), “animal”, “mammal”, etc. Which of these terms express brute kinds, and which do not, is of course up for debate (cf. Searle’s discussion of “human being” in his 2010, Ch. 8). In the text I have assumed for the purpose of brevity that “human being” expresses a brute kind.
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used to satisfy “is a dollar bill”) would still be in existence. If reductionism about institutional
objects is true in general, then institutional count-nouns are, in David Wiggins’s terminology
(Wiggins, 2001, p. 30), merely phased-sortals: an object can begin, and cease, to be an
institutional object; an institutional object need not always be an institutional object.
However, reductionism about institutional objects does not seem plausible
across the board. In many cases there does not seem to be a suitable mind-independent X-
object with which the alleged institutional object can be identified. Amie Thomasson has
objected that many institutional objects seem to be too abstract to sustain such identification.
Entities as the U.S. Constitution, General Motors, or Calvinist doctrine obviously have
close relations to individual material objects, but in no case is there some particular
material object (with additional social properties) with which we can identify the
entity in question […] In the case of the U.S. Constitution, for example, even if the
original document in the Archives were destroyed, we certainly not thereby declare
that the United States was a nation without a constitution; a fire may destroy an
original document of historical interest, but not the U.S. Constitution itself. […] In
fact, it seems that the social and institutional world is becoming increasingly abstract
[…] This makes it increasingly important that a comprehensive social ontology
include abstract social objects as well as concrete ones. (Thomasson, 2003, p. 273)20
In later writings (2006; 2010) Searle has admitted that his original theory is implausible in
relation to prima facie abstract institutional objects. He now says that “we have to allow for
the attachment of status functions to abstract entities” (2010, p. 95). Using the terminology of
Barry Smith (2003b), Searle maintains that there can be constitutive rules with “freestanding
Y terms” (2006, p. 22; 2010, pp. 97-100). That is, he thinks that we can create institutional
objects of kind Y without there being a mind-independent, concrete X-object which is
counted as being of institutional kind Y. His examples are corporations and money
represented in computers and by credit cards (2006, p. 22; 2010, p. 101). (There is no money
in the computer, neither in the credit card, and the money represented need not exist
externally in the form of concrete currency.) It is not altogether clear, however, what the
20 Perhaps Thomasson is arguing here that because these institutional objects cannot be identified with material ones they are abstract. But I think the argument can be made to go in the reverse order: these institutional objects cannot be identified with concrete physical objects because they are abstract. In any case, the latter line of thought is the way I construe the objection here.
11
ontological status of these abstract institutional objects is for Searle.21 Regarding corporations,
for example, he writes: “there is an entity Y, the corporation, that has the function, even
though the entity is, as they say, a ‘fictitious’ entity” (2010, p. 100). And regarding money he
writes: “It is, for example, a mistake to treat money and other such instruments as if they were
natural phenomena like the phenomena studied in physics, chemistry, and biology. The recent
economic crisis makes it clear that they are products of massive fantasy.” (ibid., p. 201; my
emphasis) Does Searle think of abstract institutional objects as having external existence or
not? Interesting as this question is I will not pursue it further here.
I shall now argue that it is not just intuitively abstract institutional objects, such as
laws, electronically represented money, and corporations (and I would add states and
supranational entities here), that seem to refuse to be amendable to Searle’s original “X counts
as Y” formula. Some more mundane, concrete-looking institutional entities – i.e. institutional
objects that prima facie consist entirely of concrete entities, such as persons and/or buildings –
are also obstinate, such as governments, football teams, and universities.22
A first problem is that the underlying, mind-independent level in these latter cases
(governments etc.) prima facie consists of pluralities (even though the institutional objects are
conceptualized as units), while the X-term in Searle’s formula apparently is an expression
referring to a single thing or unit (he writes “X counts”, not “the Xs count...”). However, since
a single thing (such as an institutional object) cannot be identical with many things (pace
Baxter, 1988; see e.g. van Inwagen, 1994; Byeong-Uk, 1999),23 I think Searle is in fact well
off putting the formula the way it is stated – at least if the aim is reductive identification. But
what, then, are the mind-independent concrete units to which the singular X term refers in
these cases? The best suggestion, I think, is that the X term in these cases refers to a
mereological sum of people and/or buildings. Mereological sums are supposed to be concrete
wholes or units that exist independently of human attitudes (for the technical concept of a
mereological sum, see Simons, 1987). Moreover, on the standard conception of mereological
sums, any two objects, no matter how disparate and unrelated, form a mereological sum, i.e.
mereological summation is unrestricted. Given the latter, there will always be a mereological 21 Notice, however, that “money” seems to be a mass term, not a count-noun. You cannot ask: How many moneys do you have? You have to ask: How much money do you have? Nor can you say: This is a money.22 Cf. Ruben (1997); however, he does not explicitly distinguish between abstract and concrete institutional objects. Rather, he alleges that there are many kinds of institutional objects that resist Searlean reductionism. Some of his examples are concrete- and some abstract-looking. He does not go into details in the article in question. 23 Could Searle say “the Xs count as a unit U”, and then “U counts as Y”? He might try, but I think it would be an incredible move to suggest that because we count a plurality of objects as a unit they are a unit. I think I can understand how we can assign status functions to objects via rules of the form X counts as Y; but the idea of creating units of pluralities through such formulas is of a different magnitude.
12
sum ready to serve as referent for the X term in an act of status function assignment of the
kinds under consideration.
Other candidates for being the referent of the X term in the problematic cases at issue
are sets or (if we are concerned with people only) groups (see e.g. Searle, 1995, pp. 97, 104). I
think both of these candidates can be discarded at an early stage of inquiry, however. Sets are
unsuited because they are abstract (see e.g. Quine, 1960, p. 233), or worse fictitious (Hrbacek
and Jech, 1999, p. 1). Here we are trying to find real, mind-independent and concrete units
with which the institutional objects in question can be identified. Invoking groups would be
troublesome for the following reasons. First, groups are typically not conceived of as
metaphysical units by philosophers and social scientists, at least not by those working in the
methodological individualism tradition.24 Second, realists about groups sometimes distinguish
between groups in the sense of “mere collections” (i.e. groups that cannot survive any change
of membership) and groups that are such that they can survive changes of membership (see
e.g. List and Pettit, 2011, p. 31). If we postulate groups in the first sense then it seems that we
are simply back with the aforementioned proposals, because this notion of group appears to
involve either the idea of a set or the concept of a mereological sum, although restricted to
pluralities of persons. And then there would not be much gained by using the term “group”
(and methodological individualists will think we are speaking of mere pluralities). The second
group-concept is usually characterised in terms of people having some kind of group-attitude
towards the members of the group (see e.g. Ruben, 1985, pp. 19-21; Gilbert, 1989, Ch. IV) –
i.e. the second group-concept appears to be self-referential in Searle’s sense.25 But if that is
the case then groups of the second kind may very well be some kind of institutional objects, in
particular if they involve a deontology of commitments, obligations and rights, which they
seem to do, either directly or indirectly (cf. Gilbert, 1990). At the very least, they do not seem
to be mind-independent only (cf. Ruben, 1985, p. 22). But if they are institutional objects,
there must be some mind-independent concrete unit that is counted as a group, if we are to
hold on to Searle’s “X counts as Y”. And the best candidate for this mind-independent role, I
suggest, is, again, a mereological sum of persons. So we are simply back with mereological
sums. Consequently, in what follows I will proceed on the assumption that the mind-
24 See List and Pettit (2011) for a historical survey, but also for an opposing, realist view.25 List and Pettit think it is logically possible for there to be groups in the second sense without anyone having such group-attitudes. However, they write that “we are not aware of any examples of new group agents coming into existence among human beings in this way” (List and Pettis, 2011, p. 33). Moreover, one can question how realistic List and Pettit’s view of “group agents” really is. They use Daniel Dennett’s “intentional stance” (Dennett, 1987) as a vehicle for defining and discovering group agents (List and Pettit, 2011, pp. 19-24, 32), but it is debatable what features of the world are discovered when adopting the stance (see e.g. Churchland, 1988; Searle, 1988).
13
independent, concrete unit to which the status function is assigned in the problematic cases at
issue is a mereological sum. (Let me add that I think that the proposal of grounding, say, a
government in a preexisting group of people (in the second sense) gets things back to front; in
a well-functioning democracy at least, it is because the relevant persons have become
members of the same government that the persons involved may form a group in the second
sense. Also, please notice that groups in the second sense will in any case not do for
universities, consisting as they do not only of people but buildings etc.)
But now a second problem crops up: a government – or a football team, a university –
and a merological sum of persons/buildings typically do not have the same temporal
properties.26
Consider the case of a government. We take governments to be able to persist through
the replacement of at least some of their members. At time t a certain government g may be
constituted of a certain mereological sum of people s, and at some later time t´ g may be
constituted of a distinct sum of people s´ (some minister may have died and been replaced by
another one, s and s´ not being numerical identical). In relation to such a case I suppose Searle
would want to say that at time t, s counts as the government of the country (with the effect
that that s = g), and at time t´, s´ counts as the very same government (with the effect that s´ =
g).27 But due to the transitivity of identity, we should then have s = s´, in contradiction with
our premise that s ≠ s´. Moreover, according to LL, if entities a and b are numerically
identical, then whatever is true of a is true of b and vice versa. But here it is true of g that it
persists from t to t´, although this is not true of s (not if some part/person of s has ceased to
be). And it is true of g that it was the government at t, although this is not true of s´. So, given
LL, the government cannot be identified with s, nor can it be identified with s´. And as the
reader may easily verify for herself, similar logical problems affect the identification of
football teams (like England’s national football team) and universities with certain
mereological sums of people or/and buildings.
It seems, then, that mereological sums are, in the end, not suitable reductive bases for
the concrete-looking kinds of institutional entities mentioned. And since we have, for good 26 The problem is analogous to Wiggins’s classic case of a tree and the sum of cells constituting it at a certain time (Wiggins, 1968/1997). This kind of problem may be vaguely alluded to in the quote by Thomasson above. If so, my contribution here is that I make the problem fully explicit. Also, see Ruben (1985, p. 16) for a similar objection in relation to identifying institutional objects with sets. I think sets are doomed to begin with (if we want real and concrete reduction bases) since they are either abstract or fictitious. 27 On the standard conception of identity, identity statements with rigid designators are atemporal in the sense that it is, at best, redundant to qualify them with time clauses: if the identity holds between the referents “at some time”, it holds simpliciter. I here follow the standard conception of identity. For a deviant view, allowing for temporary identities, see Gallois (1997). For criticism of the temporary identities view, see Sider (2001, pp. 165-176).
14
reasons, discarded the other alternatives (sets and groups) it appears that reductionism can
only be true of a fairly restricted class of institutional objects, including entities such as
lawyers, dollar bills and presidents. Institutional objects such as corporations, laws, states,
governments, universities and football teams appear to be, at best, supervenient entities.
4. Leibniz’s Law and institutional objects
At this stage I need to address a worry that might arise regarding my reliance on LL. In the
preceding section, I took for granted that LL governs not only mind-independent objects, but
institutional ones as well. At first blush this might seem innocent and unproblematic because
how could any particular objects a and b be identical if something is true of a (or b) which is
not true of b (or a)? LL is a principle that looks impossible to deny and virtually all analytic
philosophers accept it.28 However, Searle has repeatedly argued that statements about
institutional reality are somewhat peculiar in that they “are not always extensional. They fail
such tests as the substitutability of coreferring expressions (Leibniz’s Law)” (Searle, 2010, p.
119; see also Searle, 1995, pp. 28-9). Suppose that Searle is correct about this – does that
overthrow the argument of the preceding section?
I do not think it does. To begin with, Searle and I mean different things by
“Leibniz’s Law”. I take LL to be a material principle governing identity: it is about objects in
the world and whether or not “they” are identical. For Searle, LL is a meta-linguistic principle
which can be used to test whether or not a sentence is extensional.
Here is how LL is stated by Searle: “if two expressions [names, predicates,
sentences] refer to the same object [individual, property, truth value] they can be substituted
for each other in a sentence without changing the truth value of the sentence” (Searle, 1995, p.
18). If a sentence fails this test, does not adhere to the principle, then the sentence is not
extensional but intensional. It is a well known fact that many sentences are intensional – for
example modal sentences and sentences reporting beliefs. (Note that some philosophers take
the phenomenon of intensionality to show that the expressions, when occurring in intensional
contexts, are not genuinely referring expressions after all – see e.g. Quine, 1960, §30.) Now,
Searle maintains that sentences predicating functions to objects are intensional too (1995, pp.
18-9). More specifically, he argues that “X counts as Y in C” is intensional by putting forth
examples where instances of the schema change truth value when the Y term, standing for a
28 Is not LL refuted by the humdrum observation that objects change their intrinsic properties over time? In my (2007) I show that it is not, even if objects are taken to endure through time.
15
certain status function, is substituted for an allegedly coreferential Y term (ibid., pp. 28-9;
2010, p. 119).
Grant Searle that “X counts as Y” fails to satisfy the meta-linguistic version of
LL in the way suggested.29 Does such failure show that the material version of LL does not
hold for institutional objects? No. There is still every reason to think that if the objects
referred to by the singular expressions in place of the schematic “a” and “b” in the material
version of LL are one and the same object (institutional or not), then whatever is true of the
“first” object is true of the “second” object, and vice versa. For example, if a = b then it will
be true of “both” of them that they count as Y if anyone of them does, and it will be true of
both of them that they fail to count as Y´ if anyone of them fails (even if Y = Y´).
The application of the material version of LL to institutional object would only
be threatened if it could be convincingly shown that the metalinguistic version of LL in some
cases fails where coreferring singular expressions (referring to an institutional object) are
substituted within the context of institutional or non-institutional predicates. By disquoting,
we would in effect have examples of the form: is true of a that it is F but it is not true of b that
it is F and yet a = b (and here it would be crucial that we take “F” as expressing the same
property when annexed to “a” as when it is annexed to “b”, if we are to have a
counterexample to the material version of LL). But Searle has not shown that there are such
cases. True, in his (2003) reply to Smith (2003a), more specifically in the context of the
discussion of the identity of the dollar bill and the piece of paper in his hand (see above,
Section 2), Searle declares: “The open sentence ‘X is a social object’ is not extensional with
respect to substitutability” (Searle, 2003, p. 303). (The idea seems to be that it true to say
“The dollar bill is a social object”, false to say “The piece of paper is a social object”, and yet
true to say “The dollar bill is identical with the piece of paper”.) But the reason why he says
this is apparently that he thinks that, although the dollar bill is the piece of paper, there is a
contradiction in saying, in one breath, using only one singular expression: “The piece of paper
is a mind-independent object and a social (or an institutional) object”. And the reason why he
thinks this is a contradiction is, it appears, that he thinks that falling under a predicate
standing for a mind-independent kind entails that the object is a non-social object. (Remember
that he wrote: “As a piece of paper it is a non-social object”. He explicitly says: “one and the
same thing can be a social object relative to one description, and a non-social object relative
29 In fact I find his chosen examples highly problematic, but there is no room to go into details here. The phenomenon, if genuine, is probably due to the fact that the part “counts as Y” reports some kind of intentional attitude of the agents ascribing the status function to the X-object (see Searle, 1995, p. 29); compare belief reports.
16
to another description” (Searle, 2003, p. 303).30) But I argued in Section 2 that there is no
contradiction per se in the notion that an object falls under a predicate standing for a mind-
independent kind and a predicate standing for a mind-dependent kind. If the piece of paper is
a dollar bill (i.e. falls under the institutional predicate “is a dollar bill”) then the piece of paper
is a mind-independent object and an institutional object, period. We do not have to say that it
is only under certain descriptions (e.g. when explicitly referred to qua dollar bill) that the
referent is an institutional object. And that is all very well, because it leaves the material
version of LL unscathed.
But could it not be the case – returning to Searle’s formula “X counts as Y in C”
– that there are instances of the formula where the X term cannot be substituted for a
coreferential term salva veritae? By disquoting, we would then have examples of the form: X
counts as Y but X´ does not, and yet X = X´. Searle has not offered such examples, though.31
And in fact, I do not think that he could offer such examples and yet hold that the singular
terms are referring directly to an external object. For it seems to me that the substitution
condition could fail only if the X position in the formula were in the scope of “counts as”
(which it does not appear to be). In such a case the whole formula would just be a de dicto
report or representation of the content of collective intentionality; i.e. the formula should
rather be put as “Persons P1, ..., Pn count X as Y in C”. The X term would then not be in a
“purely referential position”, as Quine would put it. If “X counts as Y” is a shorthand for
“Persons P1, ..., Pn count X as Y in C” then the truth value of the formula would hinge on what
specific X term is used because the term would serve the function of partly representing the
content of peoples’ attitudes, rather than referring directly to an external object.32 (Cf. Searle’s
own account of the intensionality of many reports of mental states in his 1983, pp. 22-6 and
Ch. 7; see also his account of the “aspectual shape” of intentional states in his 1992, p. 155.)
30 It should be noticed, however, that, strictly speaking, there is only a contradiction here if “x is a non-social object” is taken to mean “it is not the case that x is a social object”. If it just means that “x is a mind-independent object” then there is no contradiction because, as I argue in the text, it can be consistently said of an object that it is mind-independent and social (or institutional). For a general and detailed discussion of the importance of distinguishing different senses of expressions of the form “x is non-F”, see my (2007). 31 Moreover, I do not see how such a phenomenon, per se, would refute my argument of Section 2. As such, all the phenomenon would show is that there are counterexamples to the material version of LL involving institutional truths. It would still have to be shown just why the material version of LL cannot be applied the way it is applied in the specific argument. Just how could it be the case that g = s and g = s´ when s ≠ s´ and g persists from t to t´ but s does not and g was the government at t but s´ was not? Merely pointing at some counterexamples to the principle in general will not do.32 Here is an example of what can happen if we understand the formula in the de dicto dense: The sheriff and his deputies count Jesse James as a criminal but they do not count Mr. Howard as criminal, although Jesse James = Mr. Howard. In fact, in chapter 4 of Searle’s (1995), when the “X counts as Y” formula is analyzed in terms of deontic or conventional power, something similar to the above de dicto formula is put forth: “We accept (S has power (S does A)” (p. 104). “S” does not appear to be in a purely referential position in this formula.
17
Thus, if the “X counts as Y” formula is understood in a de dicto sense then it should not be
understood as, first, specifying an entity X in the external world, and then reporting how this
entity X (de re) is thought of or treated as or represented as by agents external to it. The
consequence is that we cannot disquote with the result that we are talking (directly) about an
external object X (= X´); rather we are merely reporting the content of intentional attitudes.
(The X term may not even have a referent outside the minds of the people thinking about the
“X-object”.) And then we will not have counterexamples to the material version of LL, which
is about external objects, not representations of external (or even non-existent) objects.
I conclude that so far no good reason has been offered for thinking that the
material version of LL does not govern institutional objects.
4. Revisionary theories of persistence to the rescue?
There is another caveat, however. The reasoning in the preceding sections has been conducted
with a tacit view of objects as persisting by enduring. Objects endure through time if they are
wholly present at distinct times as numerically the same three-dimensional entity (Johnston,
1987; Simons, 1987, Ch. 5; Wiggins, 2001). This view of persistence is often characterized
as being in line with common sense. I think it is safe to say that it is generally presupposed by
writers on social ontology.33 However, philosophers of time and persistence have developed
alternative, revisionary theories of persistence. The most influential ones are the perdurance
and stage theories. I will argue that if either of these theories is adopted, the anti-reductive
conclusion may be resisted – at least for the second class of problematic objects discussed in
Section 2 (i.e. the concrete-looking ones).
Consider the perdurance theory (see e.g. Quine, 1960, p. 171; Smart, 1963, p.
133; Lewis, 1976/1983; 1986, pp. 202-4). Briefly put, on this theory, objects are four-
dimensional, i.e. they have not only spatial parts but temporal parts as well. Consequently,
they extend both in space and time. Objects, being regarded as mereological sums of their
parts, are held to persist through time by having temporal parts at various times, i.e. by
perduring. Change over time is analysed as consisting of distinct proper temporal parts of
four-dimensional objects having distinct properties. The semantics implicit in this theory is
that ordinary sortal predicates, such as “person”, and ordinary names, such as “Al”, name the
perduring four-dimensional sums/wholes (often called “space-time worms”, if the sums are
33 An exception appears to be Tuomela (2007, p. 146), who seems to be adopting, at least hypothetically, something like the perdurance theory of persistence in relation to groups. He does not, however, discuss the kinds of problem I address with perduring institutional objects.
18
spatiotemporally continuous), not the proper temporal parts of the wholes (this is called the
maximality principle).34
Return now to the problem of the persisting government g which changes its
ministers over time (see Section 2). If perdurantism is adopted, we are in a position to hold
that there is, after all, a mind-independent, concrete X-object with the same temporal
properties as g. However, the X-object cannot be held to be a mereological sum of persons.
Given perdurantism, the X-object will be a mereological sum of proper temporal parts or
segments of persons. Here is why: Our government g began to exist at time t, but its ministers
predate t (although perhaps not as ministers, but definitely as persons). The pre-t segments of
the persons must consequently be excluded from the sum in question; otherwise g would have
pre-t temporal parts and would predate time t. Likewise, most of the ministers probably
outlive the cessation of g. (The government ceases to be after some unfavourable election,
say). The post-g segments of the four-dimensional persons must consequently be excluded
from the sum; otherwise g would perdure into its non-existent future. Finally, one minister,
we stipulated, ceased to be part of the government at time t´ and another person took over
his/her role in the government from that time onwards. The first person’s post-t´ segment (if
there is one, perhaps as a corpse) must be excluded from the sum, and the latter person’s pre-t
´ segment must likewise be excluded. We now have a perduring mereological sum whose
spatial parts are perduring segments of four-dimensional persons. This mereological sum is,
given perdurantism, the natural candidate for being Searle’s X-object to which “g” refers.35
The reader may easily verify for herself that similar accounts can be given for
the other types of problematic, concrete-looking institutional entities mentioned. However, a
drawback (if one dislikes counterintuitive results) with this type of reductive account is that,
intuitively, we think of a government (or a football team, a university) as consisting of
persons, not segments of persons (or/and buildings). This shortcoming is avoided if stage
theory is adopted.
Simplifying somewhat, one may say that stage theory retains the metaphysics of
the perdurance theory but revises its semantics (for details, see Sider, 1996, 2001; Hawley,
2001). The four-dimensional, perduring sums and space-time worms of perdurance theory are
accepted, but sortal predicates are taken to be satisfied by three-dimensional, instantaneous
34 Thus, according to the maximality principle, proper temporal parts of objects of ordinary kind F are not themselves objects of kind F. The denial of the maximiality principle would lead to overpopulation of Fs in the world. For discussion, see Lewis (1976/1983) and Hawley (2001).35 During the life-time of g the spatial parts of the sum meet on a regular basis, in virtue of their proper temporal parts, and make decisions; the decisions are made within the confines of a perduring building which houses the meetings of the successive governments of the state in question.
19
temporal parts of the sums, not by the four-dimensional sums themselves. Likewise, an
ordinary name (when indexed to, or evaluated at, a time) is taken to refer to an instantaneous
temporal part of a four-dimensional sum, not to the four-dimensional sum of which the
instantaneous temporal part is a proper part. An ordinary object (i.e. a satisfier of some
ordinary sortal-predicate, a referent of an ordinary name) is consequently identified with a
single instantaneous temporal part – or “stage”, as they are called by stage theorist – of a four-
dimensional sum. Moreover, according to stage theory, an ordinary object will typically stand
in many types of temporal counterpart relations to other stages/objects within the four-
dimensional sum of which it is a part. For example, a certain stage may be both a lump of clay
and a cup. Within the four-dimensional sum in question there may be other stages which are
lumps of clay and/or cups. If these other stages have the right characteristics and stand in the
appropriate relations36 to the first stage, then these other stages will be the first stage’s
temporal statue-counterparts and lump-of-clay-counterparts. Our first stage/object can then be
said to “persist” (although in various senses, and over different time-intervals) in virtue of
having different kinds of temporal counterparts at other times. The technical term used for this
kind of persistence is “exdurance” (see Haslanger, 2003).
Let me illustrate the theory in some detail in order to make it clearer: Consider a
process which we would normally describe in the following way: a lump of clay is formed
into a cup; subsequently the lump of clay is squashed, with the result that the cup is destroyed,
although the lump of clay survives the event (even if flattened). Stage theorists will want to
analyze the scenario as follows (cf. Sider, 2001, pp. 200-1): At some time midway through the
process there is a stage that is both a lump of clay and a cup. This stage stands in the lump-of-
clay-counterpart relation to an earlier stage which is a lump of clay but not a cup – the
midway stage does not, therefore, stand in the cup-counterpart relation to the earlier stage.
Moreover, the midway stage also stands in the lump-of-clay-counterpart relation to a later
stage that is a lump of clay but not a cup; the midway stage thus fails to stand in the cup-
counterpart relation to this later stage. If we pick out our midway stage as a lump of clay, then
we can say that it (qua lump of clay) persists through the whole process (in virtue of its earlier
and later lump-of-clay counterparts). If we pick out the same stage as a cup, then we will deny
that it (qua cup) persists through the whole process (because of the lack of cup-counterparts
located at the appropriate earlier and later times). There is no contradiction involved in this
because on stage theory the exact meaning of “persist” (or “exdure”) is context-sensitive: 36 Stage theorists typically want to remain neutral about the exact nature of the temporal counterpart relation (see e.g. Sider, 2001, p. 194), but I think it is natural to suppose that it involves spatio-temporal continuity, causation, and similarity relations (see my 2011).
20
when attached to or associated with “cup” it means “has temporal cup-counterparts”, when
attached to or associated with “lump of clay” it means “has temporal lump-of-clay-
counterparts”, and when attached to or associated with “stage” it means “is identical with a
non-contemporary stage”. Alternatively, we could introduce distinct persistence-terms that
express the various persistence modes (cup-persistence, lump-of-clay-persistence etc.) in a
context-free way.37 The latter would allow us to say, using a single subject expression, that the
midway stage (explicitly picked out as a stage) cup-persists over a certain interval, lump-of-
clay-persists over a longer interval, and does not stage-persist at all.
Now, stage theory applied to our government example would result in something like
the following. At time t there is a three-dimensional mereological sum of people, s. This sum
is qua stage instantaneous – alternatively put, it does not stage-persist. s counts as the
government at t. At time t´, there is a three-dimensional mereological sum of people, s´,
numerically distinct from s. s´ too is, qua stage, instantaneous. At t´, s´ counts as the
government. At t, “g” refers to s, at t´ “g” refers to s´. s´ is one of s’s temporal government-
counterparts, but it is not a temporal mereological-sum-of-people-counterpart of s; likewise
for s in relation to s´. At t it is true to say “g = s” even though it is true to say “g will persist to
t´, but s will not”. The two utterances are compatible because although “g” and “s” are co-
referential at t the latter utterance simply means that g has a government-counterpart at t´ and
that s does not have a mereological-sum-counterpart at t´. (Alternatively, the latter utterance
can be taken to mean that g will government-persist to t´ and that s will not mereological-
sum-of-people-persist to t´.) At t´ it is true to say “g = s´” even though it is true to say “g was
the government at t, but s´ wasn’t”. The two utterances are compatible because although “g”
and “s´” are co-referential at t´ the latter utterance simply means that g has a government-
counterpart at t and that s does not have mereological-sum-counterpart at t which is the
government at that time.
Thus, assuming stage theory, a prima facie concrete institutional object such as a
government turns out to be not only reducible, but reducible to a mereological sum of people
– which, ceteris paribus, might be considered an advantage over the perdurance theory. The
price for such a reduction, however, is a plethora of persistence modes and the notion that
names for persisting objects change their reference over time. The price for both kinds of
reductionism (i.e. the perdurance and the stage theory variants) is, obviously, a rejection of
the commonsense conception that objects endure through time.38 I leave it to the reader to 37 For detailed discussion of this issue, see my (2008).38 Some would also argue that by endorsing either the perdurance or the stage theory, one has to accept the B-theory of time, while endurantism goes with presentism, which is the commonsense view of time. However, in
21
decide whether these costs are worth paying; here I wanted to make clear what the alternative
conceptions are, since they have not been addressed in the literature on social ontology so far.
5. Concluding remarks
In this paper I have tried to show that theories of persistence are relevant to the question of the
ontological status of institutional objects. More precisely, I have argued that Searlean-style
reductionism can hold only for a sub-class of institutional objects, assuming endurantism.
This sub-class is smaller than is typically envisaged by critical writers such as Thomasson
(2003) and Smith (2003a; 2003b). In order to escape this stronger anti-reductive conclusion
an endurantist-reductionist will either have to adopt some deviant conception of identity, such
as Geach’s relative identity thesis (Geach, 1980/1997) or Gallois’s temporary identity theory
(Gallois, 1998), or some deviant conception of the logic of sortal concepts, such as Burke’s
dominance theory (Burke, 1994/1997). Merely denying that the material version of Leibniz’s
Law is applicable to institutional objects is not a credible move, I have argued. If social
ontologists are prepared to give up on endurantism (while retaining absolute identity and a
standard conception of sortal concepts), the prospects for enlarging the class of reducible
institutional objects are improved. However, in the case of perdurantism, the reduction base
will typically not consist of the sought-for types of objects, but rather temporal segments of
such objects.39 Stage theory promises to deliver the sought-for reduction, but only at the price
of a plethora of persistence modes and the notion that names for persisting objects
continuously change their reference. Again, let me stress that the purpose of this paper has
been neither to promote nor to discredit some specific view of persistence, but to initiate a
much-needed process of charting hitherto unmapped territories within social ontology.
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