Book description
In this fascinating, provocative account, eminent philosopher John
Searle shows how our everyday actions and cultural knowledge are of a
metaphysical complexity that is truely staggering. He explores the
charecter of the structures of our daily work that exist by human
agreement and from this, the nature of objective reality. For example,
how can it be completely objective fact that coins are money, if
something is money only because we belive it is money? And what is the
role of language constitutiing such facts?
In examining the difference between what can and what cannot be
socially constructed, he also shows how biology, which offers facts
that are independant of human opinion and is often seen in opposition
to the social sciences, forms the basis of these cultural and
consititutional forms.
John Searle is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University
of California, Berkeley. He was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in 2002 and
the National Humanities Medal in 2004.
