John Searle's Social Ontology: The Issue of Collective Intentionality

Abstract

This article examines John Searle's concept of collective intentionality as a foundational category of social ontology. The author provides a detailed reconstruction of Searle's position, including his adequacy conditions (ontological individualism and methodological internalism), the structure of we-intentions, and the role of the «Background». Special attention is paid to the development of his theory of institutional facts through the formula X counts as Y in context C and the concept of status function declarations. Critical analysis reveals an internal tension between the thesis that collective intentionality is irreducible and the internalist position that allows a brain in a vat to have collective intentions. The central problem posed is whether Searle's theory can adequately explain the normative dimension of social reality, particularly the emergence of deontic powers and obligations that bind participants in joint action. This question opens the way to examining Margaret Gilbert's alternative position, based on the concept of joint commitment and plural subjects. Gilbert's approach directly resolves the main problems of Searle's construction. The author concludes that Searle's theory of collective intentionality is an important phenomenological description of what occurs in the consciousness of participants in social action, but cannot serve as an ontological foundation of social reality. Rather, social reality rests on the relational structure of joint commitment.