 |
Segnala il documento |  |
Stampa | ||
| Documentality: an ethical upshot |
| Leonardo Caffo |
Documentality vs Collective Intentionality
For any kind of social ontology, the first step coincides with the recognition of a sphere of social objects: money, works of art, marriage etc. To recognise these objects means including them in the ontological apparatus of reality, in the same way as trees, stones, mountains, etc. (raw facts). Both Searle (2005) and Ferraris (2009) start from a mere analysis of these objects, the differences between their philosophical approaches lie in the ‘givenness’ of these objects. Consider the following:
Searle (2005) {Social Object = Collective Intentionality}
Ferraris (2009) {Social Object = Written Act}
While both recognising a class of social objects, the two theories differ in the individuation of the conditions of existence of these very objects. According to Searle, social objects populate the world because there is a collective intentionality that brings the individuals of a given society (a context C) to believe that some physical objects count as social, for instance some pieces of paper are seen as banknotes. The classical formula posited by Searle is the following: “X counts as Y in C”, so that, for example, the banknote case will read as: “A piece of paper counts as a 10 dollar banknote in the United States of America”. According to this theory, therefore, the necessary condition for an inventory of social objects to exist is the collective belief by the ‘inhabitants’ of a given context. The whole complex of social reality derives from the iteration of this rule (Searle 2005). For Ferraris (2005a), who partly refers to the views expressed by Derrida (1967, 1972), Reinach (1913) and Austin (1962), Searle’s perspective is subject to some deviations and counterexamples. Among the best-known problems, there are that of the ‘lack of a limit’, namely the inability to understand what it is that avoids the turning of any physical object into a social one, and ‘the problem of reversibility’, namely the issue of how and why a social object continues being a material object when everyone believes the opposite (is the Italian premier still a person?). According to Ferraris (2005a, 2009), therefore, in order for social objects to exist, coherently and without counterexamples, there has to be an act that ‘pins down’ their properties, and this act coincides with writing. In the eleven thesis given by Ferraris (2009) with regards to Documentality, in fact, the sixth one recites ‘There is nothing social outside the text’, so there should be no society or social phenomena unless there are written processes that manage to register what happens in these contexts. Nonetheless, there have been many (and there still are few) societies without writing, that relied on oral divulgation for laws, precepts and traditions. And precisely from this consideration a potential counterexample rises, one that will then be used as an extension of Ferraris’ theory.
Society without writing
A recent report, ‘Societies without writing’ by the association International Volunteers for Development (http://www.volint.it/scuolevis/educazione/societ%E0%20senza%20scrittura.htm ), shows that in some countries, such as Guatemala, Thailand, Gabon and sub-Saharan Africa, there still are ‘primordial’ societies that, while speaking articulated and complex languages, do not use any form of writing. For the sixth law of documentality that we have mentioned above, since there is nothing social outside the text, not only should there be no social objects or facts in societies without writing, but this very kind of society should not exist. To put it in other, more strictly philosophical words, the very existence of these societies is a counterexample of Ferraris’ theory and an argument in favour of Searle’s. Or at least so it seems. These societies, following the aforementioned report, use oral sources as historical sources, manage to produce basic religions in which material facts count as social/religious facts, etc, namely these societies possess an inventory (even if a poor one) of social objects that populate their world: there is no trace of writing and, pace documentality, things seem to work anyway. What looks like a counterexample, nevertheless, can function as a meeting point between Searle’s (2005) and Ferraris’ (2009) theories, leading to the establishment of a relation of inclusion of the first in the latter, and to an unexpected ethical outcome.
Searle vs Ferraris: apparent conflicts
Societies without writing, while being, to all effects, societies, are blatantly less developed than societies with writing and, from an ethical point of view, present moral systems that are very poor and often conservative and traditionalist, with violent ritual practices. Basically, there are structural and evident differences between societies with writing and societies without it, differences that are much greater than those emerging from the comparison of diverse samples of societies with (or without) writing. From this fact, we can derive an important meeting point between the theory of Documentality and that of Collective Intentionality: I hypothesise that Searle’s theory works as a primordial (‘low level’) social input for the forming of societies but that, for these societies to develop further towards an articulated apparatus of social objects, writing is necessary, as posited by Ferraris.
The theory of Documentality has a greater extension than Searle’s, but the latter is nevertheless included in this very extension. Reading Searle’s theory as ‘low level’, and including it in the extension of Documentality, means maintaining that a ‘weak textualism’ – that allows Ferraris to support his theory (Cfr. Ferraris 2005b) – presupposes a ‘weak realism’, which constitutes the basis of Searle’s collective intentionality. Basically, in order to be able to ‘pin down’ social objects through writing, we firstly have to be able to produce a mental representation – through a collective intentionality – of these social objects, constructed following the ‘raw’ ones. There are ‘simple’ social objects – like those characterising societies without writing, as we have said – that allow the subsequent rising of more complex ones which, in fact, would not exist without writing. Therefore, if the existence of ‘primordial’ societies might look like a definitive counterexample to Ferraris (2009), this only holds true if we consider, mistakenly, Documentality as being opposed to collective intentionality, whereas the first (Ferraris 2005a, 2009) implies the latter (Searle, 2005).
So, each society, in a primordial phase, needs the function ‘X counts as Y in C’ in order to create itself and to ‘fill’ itself with social objects and facts, but these very societies, without writing – which manages to ‘pin down’ the social – are bound to stay little developed and profoundly limited. This, moreover, as we have hinted before, can have an interesting ethical upshot for the theory of Documentality. Societies without writing have weak and backwards ethical systems and this, if Ferraris is right, cannot be caused by anything else than the lack of written moral codes, making these rules, that constantly evolve and change, ‘eternal’ and not oral. When I describe these ethical systems as backwards I refer both to an ethical perspective and to a juridical one (considered as different from the moral perspective, Hart 2002) 3: in fact, if we consider rights even just in their limiting function, they are exercised – still according to the report mentioned above – only through religious and stereotypical formulas, and only to regulate hunting and war for males, sowing and harvest for females (and this very ‘gender-based’ division would perhaps deserve some criticism); as for moral precepts – usually transmitted by the protagonist of some tale – that imply more general rules, there is little more than a generic respect for birth, growth and death, along with a broad injunction to keep away from evil.
There is, therefore, a strict, non conflicting relationship between collective intentionality and documentality in which one theory (Searle’s) is an integrative and necessary part of the other (Ferraris’).
Bibliography
Austin, J.L., 1962, How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955, J.O. Urmson (eds.), Oxford: Clarendon.
Derrida, J., 1967, De la grammatologie, Parigi : Ed. de Minuit.
Derrida, J., 1972, “Signature, événement, contexte”, in Id., Marges de la philosophie, Parigi: Ed. de Minuit.
Ferraris, M., 2005a, Dove Sei? Ontologia del telefonino, Milano: Bompiani.
Ferraris, M., 2005b, “Lineamenti di una teoria degli oggetti sociali”, in Bottani, A., Davies, R. (eds.), 2005, L’ontologia della proprietà intellettuale: aspetti e problemi, Roma: Franco Angeli.
Ferraris, M., 2009, Documentalità. Perché è necessario lasciar tracce, Laterza, Roma – Bari.
Hart, H., 2002, Il concetto di diritto, Torino: Einaudi.
Reinach, A., 1983, “The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law”, Aletheia. An International Journal of Philosophy, 3: 1-142.
Searle, J., 2005, La costruzione della realtà sociale, Torino: Einaudi.
For any kind of social ontology, the first step coincides with the recognition of a sphere of social objects: money, works of art, marriage etc. To recognise these objects means including them in the ontological apparatus of reality, in the same way as trees, stones, mountains, etc. (raw facts). Both Searle (2005) and Ferraris (2009) start from a mere analysis of these objects, the differences between their philosophical approaches lie in the ‘givenness’ of these objects. Consider the following:
Searle (2005) {Social Object = Collective Intentionality}
Ferraris (2009) {Social Object = Written Act}
While both recognising a class of social objects, the two theories differ in the individuation of the conditions of existence of these very objects. According to Searle, social objects populate the world because there is a collective intentionality that brings the individuals of a given society (a context C) to believe that some physical objects count as social, for instance some pieces of paper are seen as banknotes. The classical formula posited by Searle is the following: “X counts as Y in C”, so that, for example, the banknote case will read as: “A piece of paper counts as a 10 dollar banknote in the United States of America”. According to this theory, therefore, the necessary condition for an inventory of social objects to exist is the collective belief by the ‘inhabitants’ of a given context. The whole complex of social reality derives from the iteration of this rule (Searle 2005). For Ferraris (2005a), who partly refers to the views expressed by Derrida (1967, 1972), Reinach (1913) and Austin (1962), Searle’s perspective is subject to some deviations and counterexamples. Among the best-known problems, there are that of the ‘lack of a limit’, namely the inability to understand what it is that avoids the turning of any physical object into a social one, and ‘the problem of reversibility’, namely the issue of how and why a social object continues being a material object when everyone believes the opposite (is the Italian premier still a person?). According to Ferraris (2005a, 2009), therefore, in order for social objects to exist, coherently and without counterexamples, there has to be an act that ‘pins down’ their properties, and this act coincides with writing. In the eleven thesis given by Ferraris (2009) with regards to Documentality, in fact, the sixth one recites ‘There is nothing social outside the text’, so there should be no society or social phenomena unless there are written processes that manage to register what happens in these contexts. Nonetheless, there have been many (and there still are few) societies without writing, that relied on oral divulgation for laws, precepts and traditions. And precisely from this consideration a potential counterexample rises, one that will then be used as an extension of Ferraris’ theory.
Society without writing
A recent report, ‘Societies without writing’ by the association International Volunteers for Development (http://www.volint.it/scuolevis/educazione/societ%E0%20senza%20scrittura.htm ), shows that in some countries, such as Guatemala, Thailand, Gabon and sub-Saharan Africa, there still are ‘primordial’ societies that, while speaking articulated and complex languages, do not use any form of writing. For the sixth law of documentality that we have mentioned above, since there is nothing social outside the text, not only should there be no social objects or facts in societies without writing, but this very kind of society should not exist. To put it in other, more strictly philosophical words, the very existence of these societies is a counterexample of Ferraris’ theory and an argument in favour of Searle’s. Or at least so it seems. These societies, following the aforementioned report, use oral sources as historical sources, manage to produce basic religions in which material facts count as social/religious facts, etc, namely these societies possess an inventory (even if a poor one) of social objects that populate their world: there is no trace of writing and, pace documentality, things seem to work anyway. What looks like a counterexample, nevertheless, can function as a meeting point between Searle’s (2005) and Ferraris’ (2009) theories, leading to the establishment of a relation of inclusion of the first in the latter, and to an unexpected ethical outcome.
Searle vs Ferraris: apparent conflicts
Societies without writing, while being, to all effects, societies, are blatantly less developed than societies with writing and, from an ethical point of view, present moral systems that are very poor and often conservative and traditionalist, with violent ritual practices. Basically, there are structural and evident differences between societies with writing and societies without it, differences that are much greater than those emerging from the comparison of diverse samples of societies with (or without) writing. From this fact, we can derive an important meeting point between the theory of Documentality and that of Collective Intentionality: I hypothesise that Searle’s theory works as a primordial (‘low level’) social input for the forming of societies but that, for these societies to develop further towards an articulated apparatus of social objects, writing is necessary, as posited by Ferraris.
The theory of Documentality has a greater extension than Searle’s, but the latter is nevertheless included in this very extension. Reading Searle’s theory as ‘low level’, and including it in the extension of Documentality, means maintaining that a ‘weak textualism’ – that allows Ferraris to support his theory (Cfr. Ferraris 2005b) – presupposes a ‘weak realism’, which constitutes the basis of Searle’s collective intentionality. Basically, in order to be able to ‘pin down’ social objects through writing, we firstly have to be able to produce a mental representation – through a collective intentionality – of these social objects, constructed following the ‘raw’ ones. There are ‘simple’ social objects – like those characterising societies without writing, as we have said – that allow the subsequent rising of more complex ones which, in fact, would not exist without writing. Therefore, if the existence of ‘primordial’ societies might look like a definitive counterexample to Ferraris (2009), this only holds true if we consider, mistakenly, Documentality as being opposed to collective intentionality, whereas the first (Ferraris 2005a, 2009) implies the latter (Searle, 2005).
So, each society, in a primordial phase, needs the function ‘X counts as Y in C’ in order to create itself and to ‘fill’ itself with social objects and facts, but these very societies, without writing – which manages to ‘pin down’ the social – are bound to stay little developed and profoundly limited. This, moreover, as we have hinted before, can have an interesting ethical upshot for the theory of Documentality. Societies without writing have weak and backwards ethical systems and this, if Ferraris is right, cannot be caused by anything else than the lack of written moral codes, making these rules, that constantly evolve and change, ‘eternal’ and not oral. When I describe these ethical systems as backwards I refer both to an ethical perspective and to a juridical one (considered as different from the moral perspective, Hart 2002) 3: in fact, if we consider rights even just in their limiting function, they are exercised – still according to the report mentioned above – only through religious and stereotypical formulas, and only to regulate hunting and war for males, sowing and harvest for females (and this very ‘gender-based’ division would perhaps deserve some criticism); as for moral precepts – usually transmitted by the protagonist of some tale – that imply more general rules, there is little more than a generic respect for birth, growth and death, along with a broad injunction to keep away from evil.
There is, therefore, a strict, non conflicting relationship between collective intentionality and documentality in which one theory (Searle’s) is an integrative and necessary part of the other (Ferraris’).
Bibliography
Austin, J.L., 1962, How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955, J.O. Urmson (eds.), Oxford: Clarendon.
Derrida, J., 1967, De la grammatologie, Parigi : Ed. de Minuit.
Derrida, J., 1972, “Signature, événement, contexte”, in Id., Marges de la philosophie, Parigi: Ed. de Minuit.
Ferraris, M., 2005a, Dove Sei? Ontologia del telefonino, Milano: Bompiani.
Ferraris, M., 2005b, “Lineamenti di una teoria degli oggetti sociali”, in Bottani, A., Davies, R. (eds.), 2005, L’ontologia della proprietà intellettuale: aspetti e problemi, Roma: Franco Angeli.
Ferraris, M., 2009, Documentalità. Perché è necessario lasciar tracce, Laterza, Roma – Bari.
Hart, H., 2002, Il concetto di diritto, Torino: Einaudi.
Reinach, A., 1983, “The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law”, Aletheia. An International Journal of Philosophy, 3: 1-142.
Searle, J., 2005, La costruzione della realtà sociale, Torino: Einaudi.