The renowned philosopher John Searle investigates the nature of social reality. How do institutions such as money, marriage, and government arise from the mere power of words? And how do mind, language, reason, and freedom come into being from the mindless, meaningless particles that make up the physical universe?

• 1: The Purpose of this Book


• 2: Intentionality


• 3: Collective Intentionality and the Assignment of Function


• 4: Language as Bilogical and Social


• 5: The General Theory of Institutions and Institutional Facts: Language and Social Reality


• 6: Free Will, Rationality and Institutional Facts


• 7: Deontic, Background, Political and Other

John Searle, Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, is one of the most eminent contemporary philosophers. Educated at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, he taught at Christ Church Oxford before moving to Berkeley, where he has been teaching since 1959. His eighteen published books include Speech Acts (1969), Expression and Meaning (1979), Intentionality (1983), The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992), The Construction of Social Reality (1995), and Rationality in Action (2002). Among his many prizes and awards he received the Jean Nicod prize in 2000 and the National Humanities Medal in 2004.