The construction of John Searle’s social reality: A social ontology without images

Abstract

The following text argues that in the theory of construction and maintenance of social reality proposed by the social philosopher John Searle, the power of images to bond individuals in society is left aside. Searle builds a systematic explanation of human social ontology where he combines relevant and enlightening aspects such as the way in which the mind sets people to perform collective actions, the capacity of human beings to imbue power to things or individuals - sometimes as unavoidable as natural forces-, and the way in which language creates non-physical realities: the social reality. However, although Searle’s theory is fruitful and influential, it leaves aside the creation of collective images, an aspect that is going to be shown in this work as essential for the construction of social reality. Thus, the power of images, designed and massively increased by mass media, is as important as the mental and linguistic mechanisms described by John Searle in the construction and maintenance of a social reality.