Book chapter

Sharing the Background

Published in The Background of Social Reality

Abstract

In regard to the explanation of actions that are governed by institutional rules, John R. Searle introduces the notion of a mental “background” that is supposed to explain how persons can acquire the capacity of following such rules. I argue that Searle’s internalism about the mind and the resulting poverty of his conception of the background keep him from putting forward a convincing explanation of the normative features of institutional action. Drawing on competing conceptions of the background of Heidegger and Wittgenstein, I propose to revise Searle’s conception. The background of institutional agency can only provide a convincing explanation if it includes the context of actions and intersubjective structures of a shared life-world. I suggest that a further development of this idea would lead to the identification of the background with a web of social recognition.

Publication details

Date of publication
2013
Pages
127–146
Edited by
Schmitz, Michael, Kobow, Beatrice, Schmid, Hans Bernhard
Publisher
Springer
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Bibliometrics

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Citation count
2
Collected 2026-08-22
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
2.28
Collected 2026-08-22
Citation percentile
88.3%
Percentile among comparable publications of the same age and field.

About FWCI: Field-Weighted Citation Impact compares citations received with the number expected for a work of the same type, year, and subfield. A value of 1.0 represents the world average.