Making the Social World - The Structure of Human Civilization (Hardcover)

There are few more important philosophers at work today than John Searle, a creative and contentious thinker who has shaped the way we think about mind and language. Now he offers a profound understanding of how we create a social reality--a reality of money, property, governments, marriages, stock markets and cocktail parties.
The paradox he addresses in Making the Social World is that these facts only exist because we think they exist and yet they have an objective existence. Continuing a line of investigation begun in his earlier book The Construction of Social Reality, Searle identifies the precise role of language in the creation of all "institutional facts." His aim is to show how mind, language and civilization are natural products of the basic facts of the physical world described by physics, chemistry and biology. Searle explains how a single linguistic operation, repeated over and over, is used to create and maintain the elaborate structures of human social institutions. These institutions serve to create and distribute power relations that are pervasive and often invisible. These power relations motivate human actions in a way that provides the glue that holds human civilization together.
Searle then applies the account to show how it relates to human rationality, the freedom of the will, the nature of political power and the existence of universal human rights. In the course of his explication, he asks whether robots can have institutions, why the threat of force so often lies behind institutions, and he denies that there can be such a thing as a "state of nature" for language-using human beings.

General

Imprint:	Oxford UniversityPress
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	December 2009
First published:	2010
Authors:	John Searle
Dimensions:	242 x 163 x 18mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover - Sewn / Cloth over boards / With dust jacket
Pages:	208
ISBN-13:	978-0-19-539617-1
Categories:	Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Philosophy of mind Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Social & political philosophy Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Philosophy of mind Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Social & political philosophy
LSN:	0-19-539617-0
Barcode:	9780195396171

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!