ABSTRACT
Chapter seven, “Social ontology,” draws on John Searle’s work on collective intentions in the formation of human institutional reality. Searle argues there is a common logic to all human social life, grounded in speech act theory, which bridges what people believe and desire in a singular act in the formation of the social world. Collective intentions in the form of “status function Declarations” have the power to give things and people deontological powers of authority, value, meaning, and certification, but also liabilities and obligations. The social world is thus not fixed or given, but dependent on the continued acceptance (however reluctant) and reproduction of these powers.
