Making the Social World
The Structure of Human Civilization

The renowned philosopher John Searle investigates the nature of social reality. How do institutions such as money, marriage, and government arise from the mere power of words? And how do mind, language, reason, and freedom come into being from the mindless, meaningless particles that make up the physical universe?

There is just one reality: Searle shows how the human reality fits into that one reality. Mind, language, and civilization are natural products of the basic facts of the physical world described by physics, chemistry and biology. Searle explains how language creates and maintains the elaborate structures of human social institutions. These institutions serve to create and distribute power relations that are pervasive and often invisible. These power relations motivate human actions in a way that provides the glue that holds human civilization together. Searle shows how this account illuminates human rationality, free will, political power, and human rights. Our social world is a world created and maintained by language.

1. The Purpose of this Book
2. Intentionality
3. Collective Intentionality and the Assignment of Function
4. Language as Bilogical and Social
5. The General Theory of Institutions and Institutional Facts: Language and Social Reality
6. Free Will, Rationality and Institutional Facts
7. Deontic, Background, Political and Other