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2013
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(2013) : Social Rules and the Social Background In: Schmitz, Michael; Kobow, Beatrice; Schmid, Hans Bernhard (Hg.): The Background of Social Reality: Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, S. 107-125
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5600-7_7 Abstract: Various thinkers have explored versions of the idea that there are nonrepresentational and unconscious dispositions that form the background of thought, meaning, and language. In this chapter, I discuss John Searle's version of this idea. I focus on how he invokes the social background to account for the functioning of social rules. This is a particularly important application of the notion because very many in other respects quite different accounts of social, institutional, and intentional phenomena generally appeal to rules, for example, linguistic rules. But what is the status of such rules? How, in particular, can they play a role in explaining what people do if people normally are not aware of them? The standard answer is that the rules are unconscious and are being followed unconsciously. Searle has challenged this answer on the basis of a thorough critique of the notion of the unconscious mind (e.g., Searle 1992). His alternative explanation appeals to the backgro und. Whi le background dispositions are not representations of rules, they are still 'sensitive to the rule structure' (Searle 1995: 145). They produce behavior that is (generally) consonant with the rules, but they are entirely physiological. Rules only enter the picture when we introduce a diachronic dimension. Background dispositions have evolved in response to the rule structure. It seems to me that Searle's critique of the notion of unconscious rule following is right on target, and I will take it for granted in what follows. But I will criticize Searle's positive account and propose an alternative one. In an earlier article (Schmitz 2012), I have argued that we should think of the background as being nonconceptual rather than as being unconscious and nonrepresentational. The main goal of this chapter is to show that this conception of the background will also help us to better understand the social background and the social phenomena that give rise to the idea of unconscious ru le follo wing. The outline of this chapter is as follows. After an introductory sketch of Searle's notion of the background, I present his explanation of apparent unconscious rule following in more detail. I then critique it and set out my own explanation. The chapter concludes with a suggestion on how to situate the background in the context of a layered view of the mind. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
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