The Role of les langues in Social Ontology

Transcription

1 Emanuele Fadda, Claudia Stancati, Alfredo Givigliano The Role of les langues in Social Ontology Abstract Our aim is to demonstrate in which way historical-natural languages like English, French or Chinese (natural, because they work through a natural faculty; but historical, because they are subjects to institutional dynamics developing into time) have a particular role in a social ontology, a role that has been misunderstood in many studies and that we try to reconstruct starting from Saussure, through a perspective that owes much to Bourdieu (and Wittgenstein). To do that we move through three steps: in the first part (by a strict dialogue with the Searle s positions) we show the importance of the dichotomy langage-languages, and in which way only its second horn can be really traced back to institutional reality. Then we develop a comparison among the institutions-languages and others institutions, to understand what types of social object languages are. Finally, we try to define the role of the languages in a wider sociological perspective constructed starting from five dimensions of social ontology Introduction The name of Ferdinand de Saussure does not immediately come to mind when the scholars deal with the ontology of social objects. Nonetheless, by analyzing his writings, it emerges an articulated theory on the subject at issue, not simply confined to Linguistics, but exemplified on the constant comparison with the social and legal institutions, so as to be possible to widen it in sociology and law fields. He aims at broadening the role of languages (les langues, not merely le langage) into a general ontology of social 1 The first part was realized by E. Fadda (What kind of language is the fundamental social institution?), the second by C. Stancati (What types of social objects are languages?) and the third by A. Givigliano (Which is the place of languages in social reality?). The introduction was written by the three of us. All the text has been discussed together, in the perspective of a shared research program. 143

2 144 Emanuele Fadda, Claudia Stancati, Alfredo Givigliano objects. By using that term to designate realities with a form of existence such that every use of them confirms the original contract (as it happens for the social practices described by Bourdieu in terms of structured and structuring structures), we observe that the notion of arbitrariness, which is the real core of Saussure s sémiologie (too often misunderstood, or subject to reductionist interpretations), allows the setting up of the same order of phenomena. In any case, he specifically contributes to a precise and articulated definition in our opinion, still the best one to be found in literature of the framing of historical-natural languages (langues) into an institutional reality. Particularly, the notion of background (as we know it from Searle s works, and through the comparison he directly made with Bourdieu s habit) is not merely related to the language as he intends it and to the unsolvable bindings between sentences and practices (already described by Wittgenstein, in a way that it s difficult to rebut), but to individual idioms (langues) considered as systems with their own local properties, which are so, at the same time, as starting point and necessary goal of the whole survey of the social reality. The systemic and relational properties (which Bourdieu describes as determining and determined by the field effects, and Searle as auto-referential and systemic) and the normative properties (in Bourdieu s words: regular and ruling, but not subject to rules) are not proper of the language as Searle affirms but of languages (langues). The Language as biological faculty which needs cultural tools to work out has instead those features of background which contemporary traditions greatly emphasize. Among those identified as regional ontologies, we will take into account the one dealing with political-juridical and sociological fields. The relationship (often underestimated, or simply misunderstood) of the researcher with historical-natural languages (langues), inside these two dimensions of the reality of social facts, can be re-established starting from the distinction between langue and parole, inside trajectories pictured and generated by social practices with their proper background. Inside these dimensions of reality describing what we mean with social, the raw data offered by social subjects living everyday life, developed in a given historical-natural language (which plays, in this case, a background role), meeting the researcher s scientific language, allows the real social data and political-normative dimension, being a possible formalization of it, to stand out. Summarizing, our aim is to demonstrate in which way historical-natural languages like English, French or Chinese (natural, because they work through a natural faculty; but historical, because they are subjects to institutional dynamics developing into time) have a particular role in a social ontology, a role that has been misunderstood in many studies and that we try to

3 The Role of le langues in Social Ontology 145 reconstruct starting from Saussure, through a perspective that owes much to Bourdieu (and Wittgenstein). To do that we move through three steps: in the first part (by a strict dialogue with the Searle s positions) we show the importance of the dichotomy langage-languages, and in which way only its second horn can be really traced back to institutional reality. Then we develop a comparison among the institutions-languages and others institutions, to understand what types of social object languages are. Finally, we try to define the role of the languages in a wider sociological perspective constructed starting from five dimensions of social ontology. 1. What kind of language is the fundamental social institution? L homme sans le langage serait peut-être l homme, mais [...] il ne serait pas un être se rapprochant même approximativement de l homme que nous connaissons et que nous sommes (ELG, p. 145) In this first chapter we will present Saussure s position about the relation between language and social and institutional reality by means of a comparison with John Searle s view (and namely his statement that language is the fundamental social institution ). We will show that once this perspective is attained Searle s statements seem sometimes ambiguous, and sometimes clearly false, and the reason for this is his lack of taking account of the very nature of languages (Saussure would say: les langues), and of their peculiar relation with the biological equipment of our species. Searle s interests, in fact, are concerned basically on how intentional attitudes can create a reality that exceed material reality, and is clearly dependent by collective intentionality. This, although necessary, is not sufficient for a clear and complete understanding of social and institutional reality, and of the role of language in creating and maintaining it. 1.1 Some little clues. Our discussion is based mainly on a recent article, Language and social ontology (2008), where Searle develops the hints already given in The construction of social reality (1995) about the nature of language as institution. In this text, some uses of the word language seem not so clear to us, and namely the shift from language to a language. Searle uses the article a when he says that people have a language. In other cases, he simply refers to language without the article. Why? Is he always referring to the same thing? To answer this question, we must first

4 146 Emanuele Fadda, Claudia Stancati, Alfredo Givigliano present Searle s ideas, and then establish a comparison with Saussure views. 1.2 From intentionality to language. The second part of the article 2 aims to explain the emergence of language from prelinguistic forms of intentionality. This process Searle shows can be reconstructed in the subsequent stages. Intentional states refer to the world, going both from representation to reality and vice versa, and this direction determines their conditions of satisfaction 3. Engagement in cooperative behavior gives rise to collective intentionality 4. The sharing of a representation (and hence of the conditions of satisfaction of a collective intention) allows the birth of meaning (so, meaning is a shared representation, together with its conditions of satisfaction 5 ). Meaning is conventional, because it s possible to separate it from the material form that conveys it. Conventionality, in its turn, introduces an element of normativity, by creating a system of expectations 6. The general principles of categorization allow the emergence of syntax. All these elements, together, contribute to the constitution of a deontological dimension, where commitment is possible 7. Then comes the possibility to state and accept claims, expressed by performative declarations. At that point, we have language, and we have, i.e. we can construct, social reality, by imposing status functions 8. As we can see, Searle develops a logical and ontological discourse about how social and institutional reality can be possible starting from individual intentions, referring to states of affairs in the material world. In this text, he seems not to be too much interested in the circumstance that language our language, the only kind of language we know, as human beings is a biological fact, developed once, in our planet, in our species 9. To show the con- 2 SEARLE (2008), pp Cfr. Ivi, pp Cfr. Ivi, p Cfr. Ivi, pp Cfr. Ivi, pp Cfr. Ivi, pp Cfr. Ivi, pp In other texts, however, Searle deals with the problem of the relation between intentionality, mind and biology namely SEARLE (2002), chapt. 4 and 5. It s not possible here to analytically discuss these texts, where we found some strange and unexplicated statements, like the one that behaviorism is clearly a kind of dualism (Ivi, p. 63). Let us only note that, when he says that «in some important sense of language, humans have language, and as far as we know, no other species does.» (Ivi, p. 65), he only hints at the real question, without even trying to explain this some important sense.

5 The Role of le langues in Social Ontology 147 sequences of this very fact, we will not turn to cognitive sciences, but to Ferdinand de Saussure. But first, we have to recall Searle s account about the very particular institutional nature of language. 1.3 Language as an exceptional but fundamental institution. Searle focuses on the fact that language is not an institution like the others, for two reasons: 1. It has a foundational role, because it introduces meaning as the condition of every relation between material and institutional reality it constitutes an exception to a general law concerning all institutions. All institutions are created by performative declarations, imposing status functions on material objects. But language is (was?) not 11. So, what kind of institution is language? Is it an institution at all? Our answer will be committed to Ferdinand de Saussure. 1.4 The saussurean view (I): la faculté du langage vs. les langues. The saussurean distinction between la langue and le langage is universally known, by the Cours de linguistique générale 12 and some of the other saussurean texts we dispose of. We will reformulate it very briefly in the following words (which are not Saussure s one). Le langage (or as Saussure often says la faculté du langage) is the biological capacity of every human being to learn every langue he is exposed to. Langage is concrete, and there is only one langage, but it is instantiated in ca. 6 billion speakers. Les langues are a plurality (UNESCO says: ca ), they are abstract, and they are shared by all the people who speak them. Our statement is the following: language/langage is not an institution. It s a phenomenon in material reality, and namely a pattern of characters in the physiology of human beings (of their brains, mouths, ears etc.). It s a bio-cognitive condition of the emergence of social and institutional reality, 10 Cfr. SEARLE (2008), p Cfr. Ivi, p We will always quote Saussure in French (using the best known sources in saussurean philology), to avoid misunderstandings dues to English translations. Cfr. «Mais qu est-ce que la langue? Pour nous elle ne se confonde pas avec le langage [...] l exercise du langage repose sur une faculté que nous tenons de la nature, tandis que la langue est une chose acquise et conventionnelle», CLG, p. 25. On the relations between langue et langage, cfr: «la faculté naturelle ou non d exercer des paroles [i. e. le langage] ne s exerce qu à l aide de l instrument créé et fourni par la collectivité [i.e. la langue].», CLG, p. 27.

6 148 Emanuele Fadda, Claudia Stancati, Alfredo Givigliano but it s not social and institutional at all. But languages/les langues (English, French, Italian, etc.) are institutions 13, because they share all the characters that Searle assigns to institutions: they are arbitrary and conventional, they depend on the will of people, they are internally and externally systemic, they convey relations of power, etc. The difference between languages/les langues and other institutions, although important, is a quantitative one, given by: a. structural complexity: there are many more elements, in languages/les langues, than in every other institution; and the systemic relation among these elements are so complex that is not possible to manage them consciously 14 ; b. conditions of use: every human being uses languages/les langues in every moment of his life (even in thinking, or in sleeping) 15. But this very facts also help us to explain why it s not possible to use performative declarations to create linguistic entities: «ce fait capital suffit à montrer l impossibilité d une révolution» The saussurean view (II): institutions, history, and language. The distinction langage/langues, however, is not the only contribution Saussure can offer to a theory of institutional reality. To show that, we will recall the very first conference of Saussure in Geneva University, in 1891, when he explained why linguistics belongs to historical sciences, saying that l objet qui fait la matière de l histoire par exemple l art, la religion, la coutume, etc. représent, dans un sens quelconque, des actes humains, régis par la volonté et l intelligence humaines et qui d ailleurs doivent être tels qu ils n intéressent pas seulement l individu, mais la collectivité Cfr. «Cette objection nous amène à placer la langue dans son cadre sociale et a poser la question comment on la poserait pour les autres institutions sociales», CLG, p Cfr. «La multitude des signes nécessaires pour constituer n importe quelle langue. [ ] Le caractère trop complèxe du système. [ ] Ce système est un mécanisme complexe [ ] ceux-là mêmes qui en font un usage journalier l ignorent profondément», CLG, p Cfr. «La langue et cette considération prime toutes les autres est à chaque moment l affaire de tout le monde [ ]. Sur ce point, on ne peut établir aucune comparaison entre elle et les autres institutions», CLG, p Ibidem. 17 ELG, p. 150.

7 The Role of le langues in Social Ontology 149 The field of what the young Saussure called history, then, is exactly the same of what Searle calls institutional reality. But Saussure, by the word history, stressed the fact that institutions are always inside a dialectic between continuity and change 18, and they must change somehow to last for a long time («La continuité implique nécéssairement l alteration» 19 ). For languages/les langues, this is particularly evident, because their structural complexity and their condition of use make a conscious management of changing impossible (see supra). So change in languages (les langues) is continuous and relevant, but mainly unnoticed. An historical element, in this saussurean sense, is present in every institution; but Searle seems to have focused only on the factor of continuity. In our view, this represents a general limit of Searle s theory of social reality, not only concerning the role of language in it. 1.6 Conclusions. Language/langage belongs to material reality. It s a biological capacity of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, required both phylogenetically and ontogenetically for the creation of any institutional reality. But it needs an instrument créé et fourni par la collectivité one langue to work out. Every Homo Sapiens Sapiens in this world must have language/langage and must speak, at least, a language (one langue). This link is the condition of every institution, but it s not institutional in itself. The institutional dimension, properly speaking, takes place when we look at which language/langue he speaks. Languages/les langues are institutions very complex ones. They are not completely equal and exchangeable, for all languages/langues create meaning, but not the same meanings. Their complex nature, and the conditions of their use, give them a historical character in a way that is not similar to other institutions. Languages/les langues change continually, in a way that is somewhat proportional to their synchronic complexity, but this is not a problem for speakers (they don t even notice it, if they are not linguists). Languages (les langues) don t need performative declarations to come to existence because as Saussure explained already in 1891 there s an absolute continuum of speaking (parler) from the origin of language/langage until today. Le premier aspect en effet sous lequel doit être envisagée l idée d Histoire quand il s agit de la langue ou la première chose qui fait que la langue a une histoire, c est le fait fondamental de sa continuité dans le temps [...] ce principe, élémentaire et essen- 18 Cfr. ELG, p, Cfr. CLG, p. 113.

8 150 Emanuele Fadda, Claudia Stancati, Alfredo Givigliano tiel de la continuité ou de l ininterruption forcée qui est le premier caractère ou la première loi de la transmission du parler humain 20 Si la langue a un caractère de fixité, ce n est pas seulement parce qu elle est attaché au poids de la collectivité, c est aussi qu elle est située dans le temps. Ces deux faits sont inséparables. [...] Nous disons homme et chien parce qu avant nous on a dit homme et chien 21 C est un idée très fausse que de croire que le problème de l origine du langage soit un autre problème que celui des transformations. 22 The only performative declaration, then, should coincide with the emergence of language/langage, which is a biological fact. But the development and progressive differentiating or re-approaching of languages (les langues) is an institutional dynamic, the most complex and unpredictable one. 2. What type of social objects are languages? travailler à la même langue ils n ont pas dit faisons une langue Condillac (1775, p. 369 and pp ) 2.1 What interests here us is to establish what type of social object languages are. Though «toute notre terminologie et notre façon de parler soient moulées sur cette supposition involontaire d une substance» 23, it is necessary to remind ourselves that, as scientific objects, les langues «n ont jamais de réalité en soi, ou à part des autres objets à considérer n ont absolument aucun substratum à leur existence hors de leur différence ou des différences de toute espèce que l esprit trouve moyen d y attacher» 24. En d autres domaines on peut parler de choses à tel ou tel point de vue, certain qu on est de retrouver un terrain ferme dans (l objet même). En linguistique nous nions en principe qu il y ait des objets données, qu il y ait des choses qui continuent d exister quand on passe d un ordre d idée à un autre, et qu on puisse se permettre de considérer des choses dans plusieurs ordres, comme si elles étaient données par ellesmêmes [ ] il nous est interdit en linguistique (quoique ne nous cessions de le faire) 20 ELG, p CLG, p ELG, p ELG, p ELG, p. 65.

9 The Role of le langues in Social Ontology 151 de parler d une chose à différents points de vue (ou d une chose en général) parce que c est le point de vue qui FAIT la chose This means that they are very particular objects, le langage n offre sous aucune de ses manifestations une substance, mais seulement des actions combinées ou isolées de forces physiologiques, physiques, mentales. 26 As social objects, languages may not be considered according to a substantialist point of view, they are anomalous entities but not purely ideal just because they develop through the historic continuum and the speaking mass. 2.3 Languages are social objects par excellence because, according to Saussure, they represent the whole of the necessary conventions adopted by the social body. They are, therefore, institutions accepted and used by the social mass which allow each individual to implement his own natural faculty of language. They form the fundamental background, since the historic natural languages are the only ones concerning «tous les individus à tous les instants» 27. As social facts, they exist only by virtue «d une sorte de contrat passé entre les membres d une communauté», «entre tous les individus ainsi reliés par le langage s établira une certaine moyenne: tous reproduiront non exactement sans doute, mais approximativement les mêmes signes unis aux mêmes concepts» 28. In this sense, they are acquired habits (Bourdieu) «en effet, la partie réceptive plus la partie coordinative forment un dépôt chez les individus, appréciablement conforme. Si nous pouvions embrasser la somme des images verbales emmagasinées chez tous les individus nous toucherions le lien social qui constitue la langue» They are social objects because they show, in any case, some regularity aspects and a very particular normative nature. In the beginning, «la langue n existe pas sans individu, pourtant ne dépend pas de lui mais de collectivité», «échappe à l individu, ne saurait être sa création; elle est sociale par essence et suppose la collectivité» 30, «la 25 CLG/E, 128 III C ELG, p CLG/E, 273 III C CLG/E, 219 Introd. III. 29 CLG/E, 229J CLG/E, 261 D 6 and S 1.6.

10 152 Emanuele Fadda, Claudia Stancati, Alfredo Givigliano langue n existe pas comme entité mais seulement dans les sujets parlants» 31. Nevertheless, the individual linguistic act becomes a social fact beginning from the exchange between two individuals, embryo of any social fact. Si, tout en restant dans le cas individuel, on considère ce même circuit pour tous les mots, pour toutes les occasions répétées qui se présenteront, il faudra ajouter une case, une opération de coordination régulière (dès qu il y aura pluralité d images verbales reçues) pour tout cet ensemble qui arrive peu à peu à la conscience. Elles entreront dans un certain ordre pour le sujet. Par cette coordination nous approchons l idée de la langue mais encore à l état individuel [ ] l acte social ne peut résider que chez les individus additionnés les uns aux autres, mais comme pour tout fait social, il ne peut être considéré hors de l individu le fait social sera une certaine moyenne qui s établira These passages clearly illustrate how, in the case of les langues, a correct and dynamical articulation of the macro-micro level does not require a postulation of a specific collective intention but rather an individual and spontaneous use of composed instruments for the build-up of unintentional regularities, maybe functionally equivalent to the system of the rules (Searle 1995), but often not perceived as intentionally collective. 2.6 Let s come now to the possibility of considering the differences between the institutional nature of languages and that of the social organizations, and, particularly, of the law According to Saussure, the language is une institution sans analogue. Although the speaking multitude is «rivée à sa langue telle qu elle est» 33, the contract «n est pour ainsi dire que théorique» 34 «les sujets n ont aucune connaissance de ce qui a précédé leur état de langue; on ne peut jamais prévoir d après les conditions historiques comment se fera le changement» 35, that is equivalent to say, as Menger does, that institutions as the law, morals or language have spontaneously arisen without any legislative coercion «by the impulse of individual interests and as a result of their activity» According to Searle, the language and law are the typical example of institutional phenomena related to observers which have epistemically objective existence even if their ontology is dependent on observers and con- 31 CLG/E, 98 II R. 32 CLG/E, 212 III C. 33 CLG/E, 1181 D CLG/E, 1130 II R. 35 CLG/E, 2767 I R. 36 MENGER (1883), pp

11 The Role of le langues in Social Ontology 153 tains, therefore, an element ontologically subjective (Searle 1998). 2.7 Within the juridical framework the reflection on the ontological nature of the law is particularly developed. Since 1922 Kelsen has warned us against the risks of a metaphoric condition in which what is psychic spatializes in the image of the tie: To suppose that the essence of social reality is regarded as a psychic link that remains to be defined more precisely, must make us conscious of the nature of this type of representation as an eminently metaphorical one where we move a spatial relationship to psychic facts and space. Strictly speaking this is a bond between men, if the society is a psychic reality, then the link recognized as a society accomplished as a whole in the particular individual. 37 It is a wrongly entified relation which is inappropriately transferred into the external physical world, since it is fundamentally among individuals. 2.8 In order to compare these two institutions, besides the obvious difference, we may use the notions of system, value, in addition to those of type and token. The types of acts represent what we could call constitutive rules of which any act represents the act of being applied. In this sense we can notice a deep affinity between law and language as institutions and use the couple type/token, which may be equivalent, in this case, to the one langue/parole. On one side there is the discipline of the acts causing an effect of which the law takes cognizance by the rules and their study by the juridical science as types of acts. This is equivalent, in the field of the langue, to consider the acts of parole, singularly considered, not as simple facts, but rather as institutional acts which, by their same execution, are the means through which the types, the general models of the langue, may cause effects and shift from the condition of social fact to the ability to act. 2.9 Intentionality represents the second aspect. In the case of the law the concept of persona ficta and, generally speaking, the fictio iuris provide the framework for the we intention, considering corporate, groups etc. like a single person. If we take into account the fact that rules have individual and collective authors (for representation) and are directed to subjects who must comply with the rules in a different way and with different intentions, we realize how, also in the case of the legal institutions as in that of the languages, 37 KELSEN (1922), p. 102; (eng. tr. by C.S.).

12 154 Emanuele Fadda, Claudia Stancati, Alfredo Givigliano the notions of intentionality, which are not very much articulated, may not be appropriate and we need a much more sophisticated and detailed notion of intentionality. Maybe Simmel s sociology and Husserl of the Cartesian Meditations and mainly of Ideas Second Book may help us. The existence-sense [Seinssinn] of the world and of Nature in particular, as Objective Nature, includes after all, as we have already mentioned, thereness-for-everyone. This is always cointended wherever we speak of Objective actuality. In addition, Objects with spiritual predicates belong to the experienced world. These Objects, in respect of their origin and sense, refer us to subjects, usually other subjects, and their actively constituting intentionality. Thus it is in the case of all cultural Objects (books, tools, works of any kind, and so forth), which moreover carry with them at the same time the experiential sense of thereness-for-everyone (that is, everyone belonging to the corresponding cultural community, such as the European or perhaps, more narrowly, the French cultural community, and so forth). 38 This surrounding world is comprised not of mere things but of use-objects (clothes, utensils, guns, tools), works of art, literary products, instruments for religious and judicial activities (seals, official ornaments, coronation insignia, ecclesiastical symbols, etc.). And it is comprised not only of individual persons, but the persons are instead members of communities, members of personal unities of a higher order, which, as totalities, have their own lives, preserve themselves by lasting through time despite the joining or leaving of individuals, have their qualities as communities, their moral and juridical regulations, their modes of functioning in collaboration with other communities and with individual persons, their dependencies on circumstances, their regulated changes and their own way of developing or maintaining themselves invariant over time, according to the determining circumstances. The members of the community, of marriage and of the family, of the social class, of the union, of the borough, of the state, of the church, etc., know themselves as their members, consciously realize that they are dependent on them, and perhaps consciously react back on them Which is the place of languages in social reality? Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt TLP Social Practice and habitus. In this third part we can go on and conclude starting from a concept that is present, in an implicitly and explicitly way, in the others two parts of our reflections: the concept of disposition. We assume disposition, social dispositions, in the terms used by Bourdieu 38 CM, V, 4, p Ideas, II, pp

13 The Role of le langues in Social Ontology 155 (so, implicitly as it is analyzed by Peirce, through Bourdieu s use 40 ). The structure constitutive of a particular type of environment [ ] produce habitus, systems of durable, transportable dispositions 1 [Bourdieu s footnote], structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principle of the generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively regulated and regular without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attain them and, being all this, collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor. 41 In the footnote he explains The word disposition seems particularly suited to express what is covered by the concept of habitus (defined as a system of dispositions). It expresses first the result of an organizing action, with a meaning close to that of words such as structure; it also designated a way of being, a habitual state (especially of the body) and, in particular, a predisposition, tendency, propensity, or inclination. 42 Social world is a world of social practices, but what does it mean according to the perspective that we have proposed? 3.2 Linguistic ground and sociological ground. Social subjects live in/a social world. This could seem a simple and undoubtedly proposition, but it contains more than what it appears at a first glance. We can identify five different ontological levels that start from what we have said in the former part of this reflections, and that are based both on a linguistic ground and on a sociological one. The boundary between this two grounds is not clear and distinct, it is a vague boundary that allows the (social) syntactic and (social) semantic construction of the social world as a process. We can construct this boundary as vague both if we assume it as a symbolic boundary and as a social boundary. This point of departure has its own reason in putting under debate the ontological, in a strong sense, distinction between the real world and the social world. The conclusion to avoid is one (alternatively) among three different perspectives, all wrong according with us. 40 Cfr. GIVIGLIANO (2012). 41 BOURDIEU (1972), p Ivi, p. 214.

14 156 Emanuele Fadda, Claudia Stancati, Alfredo Givigliano 3.3 Three wrong perspectives. We now present these three problematic perspectives. [Searle s point of view] The first perspective is the one that assumes social reality as equivalent/identical/the same thing of the natural reality in its basic facts. According to this perspective, we can analyze social ontologies by the same instruments, techniques and categories that we use to investigate the so called real world. The words social objects are another way to identify a subset of natural objects 43 ; social objects are the same things of natural objects; social objects are and have the same ontological determinations of natural objects and, in consequence of these determination, the correct epistemological model to study these objects is the mechanistic one. There is no distinction between langage and langue, and according to this presupposition, (social) structures and (social) objects/subjects, are the same things. [Durkheim s point of view] If we give a difference between objects and facts we can describe the other two perspectives. The second perspective is the one that assumes social reality as a natural reality. If we follow this perspective we assume that the social facts are the products of natural facts, social facts are natural facts. The natural language is in opposition with the scientific language (the language of statistics): the syntax is natural and the semantic is social. Social structures determine social subjects that are constraints in their positions without any possibilities to modify their own social life (individually considered), inside a struggle between individual will and social will. [Popper s point of view] The third perspective is the one that assumes natural reality as a product of social reality. If we follow this perspective we assume that natural facts are the products of social facts. This last perspective is the weakest, but at the same time, is the one that had more successes in last years. According to this perspective social subjects construct in a single, natural and deterministic way social structures that become natural structures. The difference with the second perspective is that the syntax is social and the semantic is natural. This point of view has assumed many forms in the different scientific fields, but all these forms have something in common: the unconditionally trust in the power of the man. 3.4 From ontological levels to ontological dimensions. According to our approach, these three perspectives are wrong. The five ontological levels 43 This is the final consequence we can infer by Searle s argument about the relation among natural sciences and social sciences, relation based on the use he makes of basic facts. Cfr. SEARLE (1995), SEARLE (2010).

15 The Role of le langues in Social Ontology 157 that we have suggested, but not introduced collapse one in the others in a different way for each of these perspectives; on the contrary we need to describe the interrelations between the objects of each of them to correctly describe the social ontologies that are the emergences produced by a process that regards these five ontological dimensions. The shift from levels to dimensions is given by the distinction between one reality (articulated in ontological levels) and a plurality of ontological dimensions that emerges from the interaction between the world and the subjects who investigate it (dimensions that are at the same time real ontologies and scientific fields). The starting point is now really simple: social reality and natural reality are different, but this difference is not the classical difference between subjects and what there is out of them. There is a common point of departure, for every scientific field and for every meaningful experience, something of common that is not the external world both if I see it or not. Using this proposition I formulate a question to the world: what can I say if I see you or if I don t? a question that contains a double problem: the first one is I see you or I don t, but I have a theory on you that is (or must be) the same in both cases; the second problem is what can I say according to my theory in the case I see you or I don t? What we want to say is, on the contrary, that there is something out there, but when we formulate a question, a scientific question (and all the ontological questions are scientific ones), at the same time we contribute to create an ontological dimension. Our historical-natural language according with the specific scientific language (a diagrammatical dimension of natural language) create the objects of our scientific attentions. 3.5 Five Ontological dimensions. The proposition from which we have started is Social subjects live in/a social world so the five ontological dimensions that we have to take care of are: 1. social subject; 2. social subjects; 3. live; 4. world; 5. social worlds. 1. social subject: a set of meaningful positions in the social space. Set of positions that is the result of the shift from a space of possibilities to a space of dispositions due to social practices. Set of positions that are single and momentary points in a social trajectory. 2. social subjects: the process itself that produces, but at the same time is produced by, the shift that constructs and modifies social trajectories. Social practices are never isolated and deterministic practices.

16 158 Emanuele Fadda, Claudia Stancati, Alfredo Givigliano 3. live: every social subject in interaction-relation with the other social subjects isn t posed in a world; social subjects make a social reality that at the same time modifies them by the interaction-relation itself. They don t simple live the/a world, they construct and are constructed by a real reality. 4. world: is the natural counterpart of any scientific analysis. We are in relation with it, but when we explain or understand something in a scientific field, we construct an ontological dimension. It is this last that answers us. The world is not the ontological dimension of natural sciences as well as it is not the one of the social sciences. It is the ontology from which the others ontological dimensions starting from in a scientific construction. 5. social worlds: starting from the outline that we have given to the world, we can now describe the social worlds, also ontologically, as the social fields given by the interactions among social trajectories. We can describe them in a such way according to the scientific perspective that we assume, the only possible perspective we can use when we make a question (about these themes) is a scientific perspective. 3.6 Working conclusion. What we mean when we use the expression in/a in our starting proposition? in is the second wrong perspective that we have described, the one that assumes social facts as (generated by) natural facts; a is the third wrong perspective according which natural facts are the products of social facts. At the same time, the first perspective is impossible to be assumed when we focus on the construction of a plurality of ontological dimensions: natural reality and social reality aren t and haven t the same ontology. We propose to modify the initial proposition in this new starting point: Social subjects contribute to construct and are constructed by social world. This perspective is possible only assuming that every question asked to the world is a scientific question. The scientific data of sociology emerge from the interaction between historical-natural language, that allows social subjects to live (construct and are constructed by) the social world, and the scientific language that is a diagrammatical dimensions of the former itself (also in the form of a formal language).

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