The core of social reality according to John Searle

John Searle is a philosopher of modern days whose books can change our way of thinking about language and mind. In his book Making the Social World he provides an understanding of the creation of social reality. According to this book we produce a social reality by assigning the roles or functions to physical objects and people who treat those objects in the same way and create the rule for the treatment of those objects. In short we create social reality by using collective intentionality to assign functions to objects and people.
Status Function is a feature of human social reality that is different from other forms of reality because it has the capacity to enforce functions on people and objects that are if massively recognized can be performed by that particular object or person. According to Searle when status functions are assigned to an object, the object takes on the function of representing something else. He uses such examples as “president of the United States, a twenty-dollar bill, and a professor in a university . . .” (p. 7). All of these people and objects possess the status that is collectively recognized therefore it allows them to perform the function they would not be able to do without such recognition.
In order for status Functions to work they should be communally accepted and massively recognized. Therefore status functions depend on collective intentionality and cannot work without it. Once the functions of the person or an object is collectively recognized and accepted that person or an object receives the status. Like in example with a twenty-dollar bill, since everyone recognizes that it is a twenty-dollar bill this piece of paper receives the value.
In his book Making the Social World (2010) Searle introduces the expression “deontic powers” that are carried by status functions and are “rights, duties, obligations, requirements, permissions, authorizations, entitlements, and so on.” (p. 9). Deontic powers usually belong to an institutional world in which we live. These institutions in its turn themselves compose of rules determining the rights and obligations of people and things within them. Therefore the society is hold together by status functions, that in its turn created by collective intentionality and function by carrying deontic powers.
According to Searle people created the world of institutions, status functions and corresponding deontic powers by speech acts that he called Declarations. These speech acts have a power of making the case just by saying that it is one. As an example when a person says “I promise” he or she makes the case that they promised.
Searle states that in cases where act of speech is not directly involved the linguistic powers are still involved in the representation of the created reality. He calls “these cases where we create an institutional reality of status functions by representing them as existing as “Status Function declarations”. . .” (p. 13).
Further in his book Searle illustrates that all institutional reality is created by linguistic representation. He specifies that there is not always a need for actual words of the languages, but there is a need for some sort of symbolic representation for the institutional facts to exist. Language itself makes the linguistic communication possible, therefore creates a social world.
Searle’s theory that the social reality is created by status functions and deontic powers that are produced by collective intentionality provides the reader with the better understanding of the system of the social world. It can easily be applied to an every-day life. He succeeds to connect everything by the means of speech acts and has done a great job of trying to be prudent, but the philosophical terminology such as ontology, deontology, and intentionality can still be confusing to a casual reader. In Making the Social World (2010) Searle makes a lot of references to his earlier book The Construction of Social Reality (1995) which makes it harder to accept and understand some of the details he is talking about, but in general the concept is understandable.
An example of a portion of social reality that I am a part of is the clinic where I work as a nurse. We, a team of healthcare providers, are licensed professionals that provide care to the closed community. Our licensure gives us the status and imposes the functions on us to provide the care to people in need. Our status of healthcare providers is collectively recognized and allows us to perform our duties that otherwise we wouldn’t be able to perform without it. We all intend to provide care to our patients. Therefore we all share intentional beliefs and desires to provide our patients with the top-notch care, cure their illnesses, and keep them healthy. This creates the collective intentionality of our status functions. With our status functions we also carry our deontic powers such as obligation to provide care, duties to come to work every day and help people in need of help, our rights to be respected by coworkers and clients and so on. These are deontic power that are imposed on people of our profession everywhere in the healthcare and can function only by collective acceptance.
The biggest problem with this part of social reality and healthcare in general is the lack of care for people who have no health insurance and people with pre-existing conditions. Healthcare is very expensive in the United States and many low and middle-class families cannot afford the proper care.
Currently there are measures that are taking place in the health care reform. Some of these are the establishment of state health insurance exchanges; government subsidies to help pay the insurance premiums for low-income families, young adults will be able to stay on their parents’ insurance plan until the age of 26, and many more. These actions will broaden the population that will receive the health care and coverage, expand the range of providers and specialists that consumers can choose from and see, decrease the cost of healthcare, and improve the quality of care provided.
I plan to take a part and help change the healthcare. I believe that by making a small change we can create a big impact. By going back to school I enable myself to become a part of this social reality and am currently on my way to promote this plan. After finishing this program and learning the ways to manage and obtaining the knowledge required for the leader I plan to open a non-profit organization that will provide care to low-income and underserved families in our communities. Special attention will be paid to small children and new mothers. This will include weekly post-delivery home visits, nursing instruction, infection prevention, baby care teachings and many more.
There are numbers of nurses and social workers helping families in needs right now, but not many of them combine their powers and promote the importance of such actions. Connecting these people and creating the organization or an institution with the status functions, collective intentionality and deontic powers circulating within will allow healthcare providers to become a part of it serve their purpose to the community. And in return the community will get the needed care.