John Searle on the Logical Structure of Human Civilization

This is a great lecture. He makes the same jokes he was making in 1998, but he clearly enjoys telling them. See Social Ontology and the Philosophy of Society.

It's quite a claim though, that this applies to all of human civilization.  I suppose one could just declare this to be the case in some appropriate context, ... but which one? 46:52.

His answer to the question at 59:06 seems to me to put particles such as protons and electrons fairly squarely into the category of products (i.e. theories) of social institutions: they are produced by people who have machines the development and manufacture of which are funded at least in part by income tax! You need to have been immersed in a very peculiar (I can't say particular) culture to have even a vague notion of what a proton or an electron are.

See Jeremy Narby - Intelligence in Nature. 

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