John Searle inquires into familiar social institutions and asks, for example, what is the structure that accounts for a social reality such as money? He argues that collective intentionality confers powers on bits of metal and pieces of paper that cannot be explained by their physical properties. Searle opposes the popular contemporary view that all facts are social constructions, dependent on the society in which they occur. For Searle there are brute physical and biological facts, and social facts are constructed from these—in particular from the antecedent biological fact that humans have brains. Culture, for Searle, has no mysterious independent existence; it is merely a complex feature of our biology.

Cosponsored by: Office of the Chancellor, Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Graduate College, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, The Council of Deans, The Center for Advanced Study, George A. Miller Endowment, George A. Miller Committee, Peggy Harris Memorial Fund, Department of Anthropology. Department of English, Department of History, Department of Linguistics, Department of Philosophy, Department of Political Science, Department of Psychology, Department of Speech Communication, Cognitive Science/Artificial Intelligence Program, LAS/Humanities Council, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory