Rivista di estetica 57 | 2014 social objects from intentionality to documentality Documentality: A Theory of Social Reality Maurizio Ferraris and Giuliano Torrengo Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/estetica/629 DOI: 10.4000/estetica.629 ISSN: 2421-5864 Publisher Rosenberg & Sellier Printed version Date of publication: 1 November 2014 Number of pages: 11-27 ISSN: 0035-6212 Electronic reference Maurizio Ferraris and Giuliano Torrengo, « Documentality: A Theory of Social Reality », Rivista di estetica [Online], 57 | 2014, Online since 01 November 2014, connection on 03 May 2019. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/estetica/629 ; DOI : 10.4000/estetica.629 Rivista di Estetica è distribuita con Licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 4.0 Internazionale. Essays Maurizio Ferraris, Giuliano Torrengo DOCUMENTALITY: A THEORY OF SOCIAL REALITY Abstract In societies with a non-elementary degree of complexity, we ind institutions, social roles, promises, marriages, corporations, enterprises, and the large variety of what we can label “social objects”. On the one hand, we commonly speak and think of such entities as if they existed on a par with entities such as tables and persons. On the other hand, there is a clear link between what people think and how people behave and the social domain. We argue that the widespread “reductionist” approach in social ontology fails to account for both those aspects of social reality, and put forward a new approach. he main idea is that a particular kind of social objects, namely documents – and more generally records of social acts – are the ground of social reality. he fundamental dif- ference from the reductionist approach is that the content of collective intentions will turn out to be not so important in accounting for the ontological variety of complex social realities such as ours. 1. he Social World Societies are made up of people behaving towards one another in certain ways. hat is a truism that few would deny. It is therefore tempting to claim that persons and behaviors are if not the only, at least the basic, categories of social reality. However, in societies with a non-elementary degree of complexity, we ind entities that do not belong to those two kinds. Consider, for instance: institutions, social roles, promises, marriages, associations, enterprises, states and the large variety of what we can label “social objects”. As is well known, there is a wide spectrum of positions in philosophy and sociology with respect to the ontology of the social: from the realist, who considers social objects to have an Rivista di estetica, n.s., 57 (3 / 2014), LIV, pp. 11-27 © Rosenberg & Sellier 11 existence that is to a large extent autonomous from those of the individuals, to the reductionist, who considers social objects to be at bottom “made of” people and their behaviors1. Both extremes seem to have some appeal in everyday intuitions. On the one hand, (I) we commonly speak and think of promises, inancial crises, and bank accounts as if they existed on a par with entities such as tables and persons. On the other hand, (II) there is a clear link between what people think and how people behave and the social domain. For instance, it is hard to think that you could be a husband if nobody – not even yourself – believes that you got married. his is not the case for mountains, dogs, and plants: they would exist even if nobody believed in their existence. he mainstream view in social ontology is probably Searle’s theory. Searle’s the- ory, especially in its latest formulation, is a form of reductionism: social objects are reduced to collective intentions2. More precisely, social objects are the outcomes of attributions of social functions to persons and objects. Such attributions are the content of collective intentions that are shared within a certain community of people3. hus – in a sense – social objects are just material objects insofar as they are collectively “seen” and “considered” by a collection of social agents. he theory catches the idea that the social sphere is not as real as the concrete, physical world, and it is somehow more dependent on people’s minds. hus, it is backed up by intuition (I), but it is in tension with intuition (II). In this paper we shall advance a approach alternative to Searle’s, one that is sensitive also with respect to the intuition (II) of the “independence” of social entities from individuals. We shall argue that a particular kind of social objects, namely documents – and more generally records of social acts – are the ground of social reality. he fundamental diference from the reductionist approach is that the content of collective intentions will turn out to be not so important in accounting for the ontological variety of complex social realities such as ours. 2. he Categories of the Social World he irst problem in inquiring into the social realm is that of individuating the general categories involved in it. he social world seems to be characterized by its own kind of properties. Typical examples of “constituents” of the social sphere are the function of being a president, the role of giving order, the quality of having monetary value, to name a few. Can we account for social reality only through reference to properties or do we need a category of social individuals? 1 For a realist approach see homasson 2002, for a reductionist one Tuomela 1995. 2 See Searle 1995. he theory has been revised to face certain problems (such as those raised by Smith 2003b and Ferraris 2009) in Searle 2010. 3 In the latest version of the theory, all such intentions have the ultimate form of the attribution of powers to persons. 12 he reductionist maintains that the whole metaphysics of the social world has to be handled through social properties. he aim of the reductionist is not to enlarge her ontology, when we start considering the social sphere along with the physical one. However, whether the ontology of the social difers from that of the non-social depends also on how we construe the properties in question. It is essential to the reductionist to regard social properties only as “projections” of people’s beliefs. Since if social properties are a class of “tropes”, then they are a further kind of entity to be accepted in our ontology. Yet, admitting tropes in one’s ontology does not seem to be enough to vindicate intuition (I) along with (II). Indeed, even a theory with a domain of social tropes can turn out to be very close to a reductionist approach. Tropes in general depend on their bearers (the person who is president, the piece of paper the banknote is made of). It is then reasonable to claim that the distinguishing feature of social tropes is that they depend also on shared beliefs. In order to have a president, you need people who believe that there is a president, and someone of whom they believe that. he overall picture does not seem to be substantially diferent from Searle’s idea of a collective attribution of social properties to individuals in a domain which is at bottom physical. Social tropes are very “light” entities that disappear as soon as we take away either their bearers or the collective beliefs about them. Note that social individuals would not fare better than tropes with respect to vindicating intuition (I), if the same patterns of dependence relationship are preserved. Consider a theory according to which there is a domain of social individuals, but each social individual is not only generically dependent on be- liefs and conventions, but it has also a speciic existential link to a given material entity – i.e. its bearer4. he idea that each social entity has a “material bearer” at its back is at the core of Searle’s theory. he well-known constitutive rule of social reality, through which the whole social domain is constructed, makes that clear: (S) X counts as Y in C he formula says that any social object Y is at bottom an object X as regarded in a certain context C. (S) can be recursively iterated, and it can thereby yield the wide variety of social entities. he main problem for the thesis that each social entity has a material bearer is the existence of free-standing Y terms. hings such as debts, electronic money, collateralized obligations and many others seem to lack any speciic material bearer5. Free-standing Y terms are entities that (i) depend generically on people, 4 For general and speciic dependence see Simons 1987. Roughly, x depends speciically on y = df x and y (do not have parts in common and) necessarily, if x exists then y exists; x depends generically on an object of type S =df necessarily, if x exists then some objects of type S exist. See also Correia 2005. 5 See Smith 2003a, 2003b and the reply in Searle 2003. 13 (ii) that are not existentially dependent on any speciic material individual, but that at the same time (iii) are not “general” entities such as abstract types (e.g. the presidential role). In so far as I can sell and buy things with electronic money, it seems to be as concrete as professors and banknotes are. But since electronic money does not speciically depend on given material bearers, such a banknotes6, it shows far more “independence” from non-social reality. he reductionist approach, then, requires us to show that, appearances not- withstanding, in those cases too there is a speciic material bearer7. he 1995 version of the theory was at pains to it free-standing Y terms in the mould of (S), but the 2010 fares better with that.