Screwdriver Philosophy; Searle's analysis of technical functions

In the book The Construction of Social Reality, Searle has presented an attempt to fit humanly constructed realities into the structure of physical reality. He is mainly interested in the question how social objects fit into the world of physical objects, but en passant he also presents an interpretation of technical objects. In the course of his attempt, he defends the idea that functions are assigned to objects and that this involves (collective) intentionality. In the following, I will criticize Searle’s theory of technical functions on two points. I will argue that Searle fails to provide a sufficient criterion for the justified assignment of proper causal agentive functions (i.e., technical functions). Furthermore, I will argue that on Searle’s own account the idea that (collective) intentionality plays a crucial role in the assignment of causal agentive functions is problematic. In the next section, I will first present Searle’s analysis of functions in general; thereafter I will turn to his analysis of agentive functions. The following two sections contain a critical analysis of Searle’s views on necessary and sufficient conditions for the assignment of causal agentive functions, respectively of the role of (collective) intentionality in the assignment of causal agentive functions.