A Critique of Hindriks’ Restructuring Searle’s Making the Social World

1. Status Function Declarations (SFDs)

The puzzlement regarding Searle’s notion of a SFD would seem to stem from the fact that in referring to something as a declaration, Searle appears to be saying that something specific is being said at some specific time. We could read him as arguing that actual declarations are made in an explicit way. But Searle is clear that an SFD is not meant to refer to an “explicit speech act of Declaration” (Searle 2010, 13). He is talking about “representations” (Searle 2010, 13) that, though “they are not strictly speaking Declarations because there is no Declarational speech act” (Searle 2010, 13), have “the same logical form” as SFDs (Searle 2010, 13). This logical form looks like this:

We make it the case by Declaration that the Y status function exists in context C. (Searle 2010, 99)

Such a formal statement is rarely ever made (although a declaration of independence, for instance, would seem to be an empirical example of an actual SFD). But the logical form opens up, to my mind, all kinds of avenues for analysis. Let us think of babies or of fetuses. Often someone, at a certain point, exclaims, “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!” In either case, this would seem to many to be a simple statement of fact. I want to suggest that it is not. What is being said, in a certain sense, is

We declare this body or child or baby to be a girl/boy in our context.

This is a declaration of a status function, of a label whose function or purpose is to ground a deontology, a relation or regime of rights and obligations, duties, and powers, however informal or merely cultural these might be. In the past, it should be noted, and perhaps even to this day in some cases, a version of this SFD was actually empirically and explicitly made: in the case of ambiguous genitalia doctors (and sometimes parents) consulted as to how to declare the new born—boy or girl?—keenly but perhaps not completely consciously aware that distinct deontologies would be established in each case. The SFD, then, need not refer to an historical, explicit declaration; rather it is a way to get a sense of the logical form of social reality.

2. Status Functions

In addressing the confusion regarding SFDs, I have already begun to address the perplexity regarding the term “function” in “status function.” A status function is a label that implies a purpose or more widely a deontology. To call a new born human body a girl is not, I repeat, a simple statement of fact. In many groups, even today, being a girl means something, implies something: girls have a purpose, a function; there are deontological consequences to being declared to be girl (and indeed, a boy). The girl in question is expected to, indeed sometimes must, behave in a certain way, or face dire sanctions. Her expectations for herself are often preestablished. (And the same can be said for boys.) National identities, to give another example, are supposed to mean something. They are not merely taxonomic labels. They are what Searle calls status functions: labels that imply a purpose, a deontology, that carry, as he puts it, deontic powers (Searle 2010, 8). If we were to drop the term function we would then be left with statuses. I would argue that this would be misleadingly idealist. It suggests that being a boy or a girl is socially insignificant, that there are no real social implications to being one or the other. One day humans might construct this kind of society, where the difference between being a boy or being a girl is about as significant as the difference between being 181 cm tall and 181.1 cm tall. But all societies that I know of have established different deontologies for boys and girls, and are quite concerned to know which are boys and which are girls. Status implies function, hence the utility of the term “status function.”

3. Language

Regarding the overestimation of the role of language, I suggest that it is important to note that language as such is not fundamental. Rather, it is the ability to use symbolic systems—of which natural languages are instances—that is fundamental. The confusion here stems, I think, from Searle’s tendency to use the word linguistic as a synonym for symbolic, and to use the former word much more often than the latter. So he will say things like “all human institutions are essentially linguistic” (Searle 2010, 63)—and I would argue that when it comes to formal institutions this is in large part true, but that it is not always the case when it comes to what might be thought of as uncodified, more cultural institutional facts and forms. Searle observes, in this regard, that “[y]ou do not always need actual words of existing languages, but you need some sorts of symbolic representation for the institutional fact to exist” (Searle 2010, 14). A frown, then—to take an example of Hindriks (2011, 383)—can be a speech act, as can a dagger stuck in my door in the middle of the night, to take an example from Searle’s (1995) earlier work. Indeed, in the example of institutionalization ¹ discussed in detail by Hindriks (2011, 383), Searle argues that this “case, like all institutional facts, necessarily involves language, or at least some form of symbolism” (Searle 2010, 95, emphasis added). So, while I think it is fair to say that “Searle overestimates the role that language plays in institutions when he claims that language is constitutive of institutions” (Hindriks 2011, 387), I also think that, to be fair, we have to acknowledge that Searle at various points allows that non- or perhaps pre-linguistic symbolic representation is the more fundamental terrain upon which institutions develop.

4. Collective commitment

Searle’s account of collective acceptance is quite capacious. Hindriks (2011, 386) closes his review by pointing out that Searle needs to recognize “a stronger kind of collective acceptance or recognition than he has so far,” specifically, “collective commitment.” What Searle argues is that for institutions to work “there must be collective acceptance or recognition” (Searle 2010, 8). He is wary, however, of this way of putting it, because “several commentators” have argued that this language “might imply approval” and that he “did not mean it to imply approval” (Searle 2010, 8). Therefore, he goes on to define his use of acceptance in a way that I clarify as capacious: “Acceptance . . . goes all the way from enthusiastic endorsement to grudging acknowledgment” (Searle 2010, 8). I think then that the notion of collective commitment (“enthusiastic endorsement”) is implicit in his notion of collective acceptance, as one point on the continuum. It is true, nonetheless, that he does not develop the implications of differences further.

5. Human Rights

Regarding Hindriks’ criticism of Searle’s discussion of human rights, I think there are two things going on. Hindriks (2011, 387) concludes that it is “flawed because it cannot adequately account for the existence of human rights that are not recognized.” I agree with Hindriks on the second count, that Searle does not adequately account for the existence of human rights that are not recognized. Searle does try give an adequate account, but like Hindriks, I am not convinced by it. However, I do not think that this failure signifies a fatal flaw in his overall account of human rights. Rather than try to formulate metaphysical truths about the existence of human rights even in the absence of their recognition, the analysis of social ontology requires that we foreground the precariousness of any particular social ontology, and the status functions and the deontic powers which constitute it. Human rights, like any other rights, are indeed deontic powers. They derive from the recognition of a certain status function, so long as the status functions function, so to speak, to authorize said powers. With regard to this, Searle makes an unexpected move, arguing that to understand human rights “we must treat being human as a status [function]” (Searle 2010, 181). He goes on: “if you qualify as a human being, you are automatically guaranteed human rights” (Searle 2010, 181). Unfortunately, in his attempt to account for unrecognized but existing rights, he argues that when “someone is denied his human rights he is typically not denied his humanity” (Searle 2010, 182), and therefore he still has rights, though they are not recognized. But in such a case, I would argue, it is exactly his humanity that is denied. No one ever denies a human being her human rights. Rather, “cockroaches,” “savages,” “welfare queens,” “addicts,” “rats,” “criminals,” “traitors,” “running dogs,” “slaves,” “illegals”—these are the organisms—not really human organisms—that are denied human rights. These epithets are in fact status functions, labels that in this case have the function of relegating the so-named entity to the realm of the sub- or non-human.

Searle actually offers a way to understand all this when he observes that, regarding human rights, “there is no preexisting institution that defines the rights” (Searle 2010, 182). Human rights are, in other words, wonderful examples of Searle’s “ad hoc cases”, what he calls “institutional facts that do not seem to require an institution” (Searle 2010, 19). For while all kinds of people are trying to build global institutions that could guarantee the human rights of all humans, as yet that institution does not exist. The institutions that do exist are more local, constrained (albeit inter- or transnational) institutions, often literally issuing SFDs to the effect that this or that organism is in fact a human and not just a “cop killer,” is in fact a human even though she is gay, is in fact a human even though he is a political critic, is in fact a human even though she is an immigrant, and so on, and thus should enjoy certain deontic powers (human rights). But there is no global institution, which is to say there is no global collective intentionality (recognition), that recognizes the declared status function, which leaves the more proximal or local institutions that are, as they say, violating a certain subject’s human rights to impose their own status functions, of the sort previously mentioned. The violated subject is in a very real sense simply not human and thus does not enjoy human rights in the particular social ontological situation in which she is situated. Status functions are always provisional and always embattled, and thus might fail to carry the deontic powers we assume to be associated with them. And these deontic powers are themselves subject to challenge and change and truncation (She is a woman, but can she have a legal abortion? She is the president, but can she order wire-taps or indefinitely detain without a hearing? He is a Black man, so can he really enjoy presidential power?). Status functions depend on collective recognition, but who is this collective that does the recognizing? In which social ontological situation is the status function recognizable and thus apt to carry deontic powers? We may be declaring this person to be a human being (and not “execrable scum”)—but our declaration might not be working, might not be effective, might only be relevant to our situation, and not that one over there. In light of this, it may well be that the only way to account for the existence of human rights that are not recognized is when a court at a later date finds in favor of the abused human and against the abusive institution for having violated those rights. In any other context, we certainly can say or declare that human rights exist even if they are not recognized—but I believe we would just be saying it. It is an enunciation that Searle’s framework should actually inhibit us from saying; or perhaps a failed SFD, that Searle’s framework should enable us to identify.

6. Conclusion

I hope, in the foregoing, to have constructively engaged with Frank Hindriks’ thoughtful reading of Searle’s Making the Social World, and given some at least minimally satisfactory responses to his criticisms of that book. In short, I think it is important that we understand SFD in terms of their logical properties rather than their empirical ones; that the term function in status function is useful insofar as it helps us see that labels (statuses) in human social reality are never innocent or inert, that they always function to implicate the bearer or the entity in a certain contextually specific way; that language is a particular form of symbolic action and that it is the latter that is truly fundamental for human institutions, formal and not; that collective commitment is present although not developed in Searle’s notion of collective acceptance; and that Searle’s account of human rights, while possibly flawed, is nonetheless worth pondering further in light of his innovative claim that human is a status function.