Sassing John Searle over wine and cheese
Last night skipped out of work early to go see John Searle lecture at UChicago. I've been cranky ever since.
Where does Searle get off titling a lecture 'Language and Social Ontology' which has absolutely nothing to do with language? In which, within the first five minutes, he explicitly refuses to admit any considerations from formal linguistics, as his theory exists (conveniently) "beyond the scope" of that "naive" discipline?
The deceptive 'Language' tag comes from the lecture's central claim: that humans' distinctive social/institutional existence is entirely (yes, entirely) founded on a single 'logico-linguistic operator', a logical formula which is apparently a core property of our language capacity, although Searle offered absolutely no explanation as to why or how this is. Well, here's what it looks like:
X counts as Y in C(ontext).
Savvy Searle recognizes that he can reduce a room full of humanities people to stupefied awe just by putting a formula on the board. It just looks so sexy and formal and indisputable! Like MATH! Searle paved the way for a Q&A session of worshipful brown-nosing and soft-ball 'clarification' questions ("Dr. Searle, first I just want to thank you for such an utterly riveting talk. I just was wondering if collective emotions and fears count are status functions too? Because I'm totally excited about the prospect of reducing every human social experience to an instantiation of your formula!"). In response to more probing questions, Searle would direct us to one of his books, affably apologizing for his inability to provide a Q&A-length gloss of his answer.
The talk was sponsored and primarily attended by members of the 'Human Development' department at UChicago. (Last night I was embarrassed that I had no idea what they study! Luckily the department website offers this elucidating description: "An interdisciplinary approach to the study of individuals in context.") So, the linguists and cognitive scientists in the room were politely silent during the Q&A, since Searle had already informed us that his claims were inaccessible to our theories. But afterwards there was a reception and I thought it wasn't inappropriate to ask him some of the questions I had. I want to describe in more detail later, but I'm convinced that this man hasn't read (or won't claim to have read) any literature that is outside his field and that isn't either consistent with his ideas or a direct refutation by someone well-known enough to attract Searle's attention. In his lecture, he had the gall to reference humans' intrinsic categorization schemes as an example of how we designate different classes of status-function systems, but told me he hasn't read anything of Lakoff's since Metaphors We Live By (1980) and doesn't remember enough to discuss Lakoff's ideas. (I understand; the 80s were a hectic time for Searle, who was busy suing the town of Berkeley over the rent control laws that limited his financial gain as a real estate investor.)
tbc...
Where does Searle get off titling a lecture 'Language and Social Ontology' which has absolutely nothing to do with language? In which, within the first five minutes, he explicitly refuses to admit any considerations from formal linguistics, as his theory exists (conveniently) "beyond the scope" of that "naive" discipline?
The deceptive 'Language' tag comes from the lecture's central claim: that humans' distinctive social/institutional existence is entirely (yes, entirely) founded on a single 'logico-linguistic operator', a logical formula which is apparently a core property of our language capacity, although Searle offered absolutely no explanation as to why or how this is. Well, here's what it looks like:
X counts as Y in C(ontext).
Savvy Searle recognizes that he can reduce a room full of humanities people to stupefied awe just by putting a formula on the board. It just looks so sexy and formal and indisputable! Like MATH! Searle paved the way for a Q&A session of worshipful brown-nosing and soft-ball 'clarification' questions ("Dr. Searle, first I just want to thank you for such an utterly riveting talk. I just was wondering if collective emotions and fears count are status functions too? Because I'm totally excited about the prospect of reducing every human social experience to an instantiation of your formula!"). In response to more probing questions, Searle would direct us to one of his books, affably apologizing for his inability to provide a Q&A-length gloss of his answer.
The talk was sponsored and primarily attended by members of the 'Human Development' department at UChicago. (Last night I was embarrassed that I had no idea what they study! Luckily the department website offers this elucidating description: "An interdisciplinary approach to the study of individuals in context.") So, the linguists and cognitive scientists in the room were politely silent during the Q&A, since Searle had already informed us that his claims were inaccessible to our theories. But afterwards there was a reception and I thought it wasn't inappropriate to ask him some of the questions I had. I want to describe in more detail later, but I'm convinced that this man hasn't read (or won't claim to have read) any literature that is outside his field and that isn't either consistent with his ideas or a direct refutation by someone well-known enough to attract Searle's attention. In his lecture, he had the gall to reference humans' intrinsic categorization schemes as an example of how we designate different classes of status-function systems, but told me he hasn't read anything of Lakoff's since Metaphors We Live By (1980) and doesn't remember enough to discuss Lakoff's ideas. (I understand; the 80s were a hectic time for Searle, who was busy suing the town of Berkeley over the rent control laws that limited his financial gain as a real estate investor.)
tbc...