Podcast Summary

Podcast: LSE: Public lectures and events
Episode: The Deconstruction of Social Unreality: How to Naturalise Social Facts
Date: November 17, 2011
Host: LSE Film and Audio Team
Speaker: Dan Sperber
Chair: Roman Frigg

Overview

This lecture, delivered by the influential cognitive and social scientist Dan Sperber, tackles a core problem in social ontology: What kind of things are social facts, and how can we ‘naturalise’ them—i.e., conceive of them within a naturalistic, scientific framework? Sperber critically engages with John Searle’s influential theory of institutional facts and “the construction of social reality,” arguing that our everyday and scholarly ontologies of social facts contain a fundamental error. He proposes an alternative ‘epidemiological’ approach: Social phenomena are best analysed as chains of natural cognitive and environmental events, rather than as special facts created simply by collective recognition or declaration.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Fundamental Error” in Social Ontology

(from 03:16)

• Sperber begins by explaining that both laypeople (the “folk”) and most scholars systematically misunderstand what social phenomena are “made of.”
• He sets up a critique of John Searle and others who posit a special ontology for social facts, especially institutional ones like marriage or money.
• Quote:
  “We tend to have very strange views of what social phenomena are made of. Views which are, in fact, totally implausible if you think about it seriously.” (03:44)
• He introduces examples (sacrificial rituals in Ethiopia, weddings, games) to show how, in describing social phenomena, we often (but not always) attribute causal powers to things like supernatural processes or to social conventions.

2. Cambridge Properties and Causal Powers

(from 13:00)

• Sperber introduces the philosophical concept of “mere Cambridge properties”—changes that are not causally significant (e.g., becoming someone’s survivor when that person dies far away).
• He applies this to social status changes, such as becoming a widow, arguing that such status is a mere Cambridge property: real for society, but not a causally active property in itself.
• Quote:
  “Nothing is modified, no causally relevant property is acquired by Bill and Susan when they've been declared married...” (44:04)

3. Critique of Searle’s View on Institutional Facts

(from 23:00)

• Searle claims institutional facts (like marriages, money, etc.) are created by collective recognition or declaration.
• Sperber argues that saying a thing is “recognized” or “declared” does not itself create a causally significant fact in the world; the real causal work is done by the events—declarations, recognitions, etc.—not by an abstract institutional “fact”.
• Quote (referring to Searle):
  “One of the strangest and most striking features of institutional facts is that there is nothing institutional there to the institutional fact prior to its creation... we get away with it to the extent that we can get other people to accept it.” (paraphrasing Searle, 25:42)
• He points out that the common sociological claim—“a fact is institutional if it is recognized as such”—cannot even account for real-world cases, like unrecognized but technically valid marriages.

4. Epidemiological/Naturalistic Approach to Social Facts

(from 39:00)

• Sperber proposes that social facts should be re-analysed as “cognitive causal chains”: sequences of cognitive and behavioral events connected causally through communication, memory, perception, action, and the environment—no extra or “magical” facts need be posited.
• He develops this via examples such as “saying bless you” after a sneeze, money, and folktales (e.g., Little Red Riding Hood).
• Quote:
  “Social phenomena, I argue, are wholly made of causal chains that link two kinds of events. Some events... take place inside the mind, and some... in the common environment.” (39:44)
• This approach, Sperber insists, is not reductionist. Instead, it rethinks social phenomena in scientifically intelligible, entirely naturalistic terms.

5. Institutional Facts as Complex Cultural Causal Chains

(from 53:00)

• Institutions, in Sperber’s view, are stabilized by higher-order cognitive/communicative rules (e.g., marriage rules) that themselves are transmitted and maintained via causal chains.
• Institutional phenomena are thus not special facts but complex patterns of recurring representations and practices, always explainable via environmental and cognitive events.
• Quote:
  “Institutions are complex cultural cognitive culture chains... The distribution itself is a causally potent phenomena which as social agents we summarize by saying they are married. But we should not so summarize when we're doing science.” (57:34)

6. Degrees of Sociality and Culturality

(from 57:00 onward)

• Rather than social/cultural facts being a binary distinction, Sperber argues they exist by degree:
  “Something is social to the extent that its properties are explained by being embedded in a social cognitive causal change... Everything that humans do has a certain degree of culturality.” (58:55)

7. Causal Powers and Scientific Ontology

(from 59:30)

• Sperber concludes that a scientifically useful ontology focuses on tracking where causal powers genuinely lie—always in mental states and environmental events.
• Misattributing causal powers to abstract “institutional facts” (as in much social theory) is an obstacle to scientific understanding.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the folk–scientific divide:
  “Folk ontology is something to be studied, something important... But we also have to develop a scientific ontology in a principled manner.” (45:32)
• On the “magic” of declarations:
  “It's magic to say, ah, it is believed to be, or it is declared to be money, and that has the power of making it so. The point I've been making is being declared to be something, being believed to be something, are typically causally inert properties.” (65:01)
• On language as a divide:
  “It's an important distinction, those things which need language and those things which don't need language. Still, I don't think it creates a kind of ontological divide.” (63:55)
• On institutional facts:
  “Institutional facts are brute facts. Even Searle would say, of course, social facts are natural facts... But he thinks that... you allow yourself to have quite a different class of causal facts, the connection among which is widely mysterious.” (59:46)

Key Q&A Segments

• Q: Is language necessary for money? (61:54)
  [C]: “I don't see how you could possibly get money without language.”
  [B]: “I'm not saying you could... [but] it's not enough to say that it's not magic for it not to be magic... being declared to be something, being believed to be something, are typically causally inert properties.” (65:01)

• Q: Is there a divide between brute and institutional facts? (66:25)
  [E]: “At the end, you said institutional facts are just brute facts. But... when this extra layer is added on, something additional happens?”
  [B]: “We don't need to have norms in ontology. All we need is representations, normative representations... Institutional facts are just one kind of good fact among others.” (66:25-68:25)

• Q: Are your scientific concepts (causation, causal chain) themselves “folk”? (71:23)
  [H]: “Why aren't the concepts that you're using in your naturalism not folk concepts?”
  [B]: “I'm not hostile to folk concept[s]... But it's not going to decide what an optimal kind of conceptual framework [is] for developing a scientific approach.” (71:27-72:00)

Memorable Moments

• The “Bless You” example:
  Sperber’s demonstration of how a tiny social ritual (saying “Bless you” to someone who sneezes) can be analysed as part of a vast, centuries-old causal chain, rather than as an arbitrary, self-standing “social fact.” (54:37)
• The parable of Liza, the instantly-created widow:
  Illustrates the oddity of thinking mere status change (e.g., becoming a widow faster than light) as something with causal power, highlighting the “mere Cambridge property” problem. (14:42)
• Audience challenge on reductionism:
  “So why don’t you say, well, it’s just causal chains of atoms, molecules, energy? How do you defend yourself from the bottom?”
  Sperber’s answer: His approach represents a difference of scale, not of ontological “level,” retaining psychological and social description rather than reducing everything to atoms. (78:22)

Timestamps of Major Segments

• Opening / Introduction of Topic: 03:16–13:00
• Folk vs. Scientific Ontology; Supernatural examples: 13:00–23:00
• Cambridge Properties / Status Change Debate: 23:00–39:00
• Epidemiological / Causal Chains Approach Introduced: 39:00–54:00
• Examples: Folktales, Rituals, Institution-building: 54:00–59:30
• Degrees of Sociality / Summary of Approach: 59:30–62:00
• Q&A Highlights: 62:00 onwards

Tone and Delivery

Dan Sperber’s delivery is witty, critical, and exploratory, with a strong polemical edge (“I decided to be a bit polemic... and target the polemics in particular at somebody who likes them very much and is also a friend. That's John Searle.” 03:35). He keeps a friendly tension between deeply technical philosophical argument and practical, empirical examples. Throughout, he encourages open questioning, challenging the intellectual complacency of received social science and philosophy alike.

Conclusion

Sperber recommends abandoning the idea of institutional facts as “extra” features of reality, urging that social sciences reframe social phenomena in terms of empirically tractable causal chains—interlacing mental, behavioral, and environmental events. Social and cultural facts are not mysterious, nor do they demand “institutional magic”; their real, natural underpinnings can and should be explicated thoroughly, step by step, scale by scale.

Final take: Misattributing causal powers to social titles or collective beliefs is a surefire way to miss how the social world really works. Instead, study the causal networks—inside minds, between individuals, and across generations—that actually generate and sustain our shared social reality.