VT

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On Free-Standing Y Terms

Barry Smith

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X counts as Y in context C

Searle’s original theory: X and Y are one and the same part of physical reality (the only reality there is)

that is such as to fall under different descriptions

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MAIN THESIS:

There are important provinces of institutional reality which have no underlying X term

The Y term is then free-floating; it exists, but it is not a part of physical reality

The Y term exists because there are documents which record its existence

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Y = The money in your bank account

There is no X term hereRather the money in your bank account is

merely represented by blips in the bank’s computer

To understand these matters properly we need to pay careful attention to the role of documents and representations in the architecture of institutional reality

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Medico-Ontological Preamble

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GenBank

National Center for Biotechnology Information, Washington DC

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What is a gene?

a gene is a DNA region of biological interest with a name and that carries a genetic trait or phenotype

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The Importance of Getting Documentation Right

Health Level 7 Reference Information Model (HL7 RIM)

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Ontology of HL7 RIM based on Speech Act Theory

the medical record is not a collection of facts, but "a faithful record of what clinicians have heard, seen, thought, and done." [Its Act class represents] what is known as "speech-acts" in linguistics and philosophy.

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[Speech] Acts in HL7 have MOODS

Example: a blood glucose observation:

DEFINITION [MOOD] specifies the Act of "obtaining blood glucose"

INTENT: the author "should obtain blood glucose"ORDER: the author requests to "please obtain blood

glucose" EVENT: the author states that "blood glucose was

obtained". GOAL: the author states that "our goal is to be able to

obtain blood glucose with the given value (range)".

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Acts have MOODS, and come in SEQUENCES

An activity in the real world may progress from defined, through planned and ordered to executed, which is represented as the mood of the Act. [Sic] … it is often critical that a permanent and faithful record be maintained of this progression.

= Electronic Patient Record(the Holy Grail of Medical Informatics)

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The Ontology of HL7 RIMAct as statements or speech-acts are the only representation of real world facts or processes in the HL7 RIM. The truth about the real world is constructed through a combination (and arbitration) of such attributed statements only, and there is no class in the RIM whose objects represent "objective states of affairs" or "real processes" independent from attributed statements. As such, there is no distinction between an activity and its documentation. Every Act includes both to varying degrees.

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The failure to distinguish between facts and their representations (or between objects and concepts) is endemic in

linguistics

“One of the cornerstones of the objectivist paradigm is the independence of metaphysics from epistemology. The world is as it is, independent of any concept, belief, or knowledge that people have. Minds, in other words, cannot create reality. I would like to suggest that this is false and that it is contradicted by just about everything known in cultural anthropology.” – George Lakoff

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The same failure is endemic in computer and information science

“Concepts, also known as classes, are used in a broad sense. They can be abstract or concrete, elementary or composite, real or fictious. In short, a concept can be anything about which something is said, and, therefore, could also be the description of a task, function, action, strategy, reasoning process, etc.”

Corcho and Gomez-Perez, "A Roadmap to Ontology Specification Languages"

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Why is this important?

HL7: “ ... there is no distinction between an activity and its documentation. ... ”

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HL7 Corporate Sponsors:

GE IBM

Microsoft Oracle Siemens

Sun MicrosystemsErnst & Young

Eli Lilly

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HL7 Merchandizing

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Federally mandated ontological confusion

“All US federal agencies are required to adopt HL7 messaging standards to ensure that each federal agency can share information that will improve coordinated care for patients”

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The Ontology of War

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WAR

events on the ground

speech acts

speech acts

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WAR

speech acts

speech acts

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War is an essentially two-leveled affair(speech acts plus physical actions)

Unlike wrestling:

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The Ontology of Chess

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A Game of Chess

physical movementsof physical pieces of wood

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A Game of Chess

physical movementsof physical pieces of wood

thoughts

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A Game of Chess

physical movementsof physical pieces of wood

thoughtsthoughts

records representations

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A Game of Chess

physical movementsof physical pieces of wood

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A Game of Blind Chess

?

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A Game of Blind Chess

?

thoughtsthoughts

records representations

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John Kearns:A normal chess game doesn’t consist of

movements of pieces on a board, but of two alternating sequences of acts on the part of the players.

These are (intentional) acts of moving pieces on a board.

A game of blind chess also consists of alternating sequences of acts.

But now these are speech acts, which represent moves of pieces on a board.

Representing the movements takes the place of actually carrying out the movements.         

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John Kearns:A normal chess game doesn’t consist of

movements of pieces on a board, but of two alternating sequences of acts on the part of the players.

HOW WOULD THIS APPLY IN THE CASE OF WAR?         

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A Game of Blind Chess

something non-physical

– the thoughts in the minds of the players and their successive utterances are not parts of the game

– they belong rather to the domain of records and representations

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A Game of Blind Chess

something non-physicalan abstract pattern tied to specific

players and to a specific historical occasion

which exists because there are representations in the form of speech acts of the parties involved

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A Debt

an abstract pattern tied to specific parties and to a specific initiating event

records representations

thoughts,worries

thoughts

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Searle’s Speech Acts (1969)

Regulative Rules

regulate antecedently existing forms of behavior

as rules of polite table behavior regulate eating

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Constitutive rules

create new forms of behavioras the rules of chess create the very possibility of our engaging in the type of activity we call playing chess

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Constitutive rules

have the basic form:

X counts as Y in context C

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Examples

X = a certain arm movement

Y = signalling to turn left

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Constitutive rulesX = utterance of the form

‘I promise to mow the lawn’

Y = putting yourself under a corresponding obligation

The Y term characteristically marks something that has consequences in the form of rewards, penalties, obligations

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Searle:

When you perform a speech act then you create an institutional fact

= a fact whose existence presupposes the existence of certain systems of constitutive rules called ‘institutions’

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Examples of institutions:

money

property

marriage

government

chessbaseball

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Constitutive rules

affect our behavior in the following way: where such rules obtain we can perform certain special types of activities (e.g. playing chess)

in virtue of this our behavior can be interpreted by ourselves and by others in terms of certain very special types of institutional concepts.

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Searle’s Challenge

To develop an ontology of social reality that is both realist and naturalistic

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Realism

social reality exists

it is not a mere fiction

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Naturalism

There is one world, and everything in it is governed by the laws of physics (sometimes also by the laws of biology, neurology, …)

Question: is Searle, with his new-found gaps, and selves, still a naturalist?

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Social RealityBy acting in accordance with constitutive rules

we are able to impose certain special rights,

duties, obligations

– ‘deontic powers’ –

on our fellow human beings and on the reality

around us.

Searle: this ‘involves a kind of magic’

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Institutional facts

social facts involving a deontic

component;

… they are facts which arise when

human beings collectively award status

functions to parts of reality,

which means: functions those parts of

reality could not perform exclusively in

virtue of their physical properties.

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This works

via constitutive rules

X counts as Y in context C

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The X Counts As Y Theory of Institutional Reality

Naturalism implies that both the X and the Y terms in Searle’s formula range in every case over token physical entities

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Social Reality

By exchanging vows before witnesses

a man and a woman bring a husband and a

wife into being

(out of X terms are created Y terms with new

status and powers).

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A President

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A California Driving License

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Cathedral

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Wife and husband

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X counts as Y, Y counts as Z

… a Y term can itself play the role of a new X term in iterations of the formula:

status functions can be imposed upon physical reality as it has been shaped by earlier impositions of function

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but, because of naturalism, this imposition of function gives us nothing ontologically new

Bill Clinton is still Bill Clinton even when he counts as President; Miss Anscombe is still Miss Anscombe even when she counts as Mrs Geach

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Social ObjectsWhile each Y term is in a sense a new entity – President Clinton did not, after all, exist before his Inauguaration – this new entity is from the physical perspective the same old entity as before.

What has changed is the way the entity is treated in given contexts and the descriptions under which it falls.

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Turtles

Searle: wherever a status-function is imposed there has to be something it is imposed upon

Eventually the hierarchy must bottom out in phenomena whose existence is not a matter of human agreement.

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Objects and events

The range of X and Y terms includes not only individual substances (objects, things) such as you and me but also events

as when an act of uttering counts as the making of a promise.

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Naturalism: when a given event counts as the

making of a promise, then the event itself does not physically change; no new event comes into being,

rather the event with which we start is treated in a special way.

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Naturalism:

This works when the Y term exists simultaneously with the corresponding X term

(as when an audioacoustic blast counts as an utterance of English)

– the two are, after all, identical

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Naturalism:

but how can an event which lasts for just 2 seconds be the bearer, the ontological support, the physical foundation,of deontic powers (e.g. claims, obligations) which continue to exist for several months?

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Here, there is no piece of green-printed paper, no organism, no building, is available to serve as X term in the future.

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Searle’s response: “my analysis originally started with speech acts, and the whole purpose of a speech act such as promising

“is to create an obligation that will continue to exist after the original promise has been made.

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“I promise something on Tuesday, and the act of uttering ceases on Tuesday, but the obligation of the promise continues to exist over Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, etc.”

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Searle admitsfree-standing Y terms:

“that is not just an odd feature of speech acts, it is characteristic of the deontic structure of institutional reality. “So, think for example, of creating a corporation. Once the act of creation of the corporation is completed, the corporation exists.

“It need have no physical realization,it may be just a set of status functions.”

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Searle’s response: “The whole point of institutional facts is that once created they continue to exist as long as they are recognized. “You do not need the X term once you have created the Y status function. “At least you do not need it for such abstract entities as obligations, responsibilities, rights, duties, and other deontic phenomena, and these are, or so I maintain, the heart of the ontology of institutional reality.”

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The ProblemHow can Searle’s naturalism comprehend free-standing Y terms

how can obligations, responsibilities, rights, duties, corporations – and blind chess games – exist in the very same reality that is described by physics and biology?

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?

thoughtsthoughts

records representations

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Institutional realityincludes not only physical objects and events but also certain abstract entities:

corporations

obligations

debts

which have documentations but coincide with no parts of physical reality

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The Construction of Social Reality:

all sorts of things can be money, but there has to be some physical realization, some brute fact

– even if it is only a bit of paper or a blip on a computer disk –

on which we can impose our institutional form of status function.

Thus there are no institutional facts without brute facts.

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But

Does a blip on a computer disk really count as money? Do we truly impose status functions on blips in computers? Can we use blips in computers to buy things with?

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Searle confesses his errorOn at least one point … Smith has shown that the account I gave in [The Construction of Social Reality] is mistaken.

I say that one form that money takes is magnetic traces on computer disks, and another form is credit cards.

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“Strictly speaking neither of these is money, rather, both are different

representations of money.”

Strictly strictly speaking, the credit card is used to create an obligation on the part of your bank to transfer money in the future, of which your credit card receipt is a representation.

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Blips in computers merely represent money.

Title deeds merely record or register the existence of a property right.

An IOU note records the existence of a debt; it does not count as the debt.

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Objects vs. RepresentationsMental acts do not count as obligations, any more than blips in computers count as money.Mental acts do not count as moves in chess gamesWorries do not count as debtsRather, all of these things belong to the domain of records and registrations

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The Credit Card

“can be used in a way that is in many respects functionally equivalent to money, but even so it is not itself money.

“It is a fascinating project to work out the role of these different sorts of representations of institutional facts, and I hope at some point to do it.”

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The World of Finance

We often take advantage of the abstract (non-physical) status of free-standing Y terms

in order to manipulate them in quasi-mathematical ways:

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There are Mathematical Provinces of Institutional Reality

we pool and collateralize assets

we securitize loans

we consolidate debts

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A New View of the Ontology of Social Reality

We describe first of all those social entities (lawyers, doctors, traffic signs; speeches, coronations, weddings) which coincide with physical objects or events.

These provide the solid scaffolding which holds together the successive levels of institutional reality as it rises up, through the imposition of ever new complexes of status functions, to new heights.

These social entities form the physical web of institutional facts within which there are to be found in the interstices also free-standing Y terms, which are sustained in being by records and representations.

These free-standing Y terms can then themselves give rise to new, elevated pillars in this great edifice

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Free-Standing Y Terms

are entities of a third kind:

there are neither real, physical entities

nor abstract, Platonic entities existing outside time and space

but abstract entities tied to history and to specific contexts of human behavior

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Free Standing Y Money

does not tarnish

does not burn

is not subject to physical processes

its existence in time rather has the form:

does not existdoes not exist

exists

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US Consumer Transactions (2001) in US$ Billions

Electronic 2

Debit Card 11

Credit Card 21 118

Direct Checks 29

Consumer Checks 35

Cash 51

free - standing Y money

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US Consumer Transactions (2020) in US$ Billions

Electronic 30

Debit Card 49

Credit Card 38 156

Direct Checks 15

Consumer Checks 24

Cash 52

free - standing Y money

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Come the day when we are all socializing brains in a vat

the entirety of institutional reality will consist in free-standing Y terms