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action may be taken, diverging in the extent to which they
underwrite existential and other claims made in any such
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The Narrow Arguments
specification. One version embraces only what I shall call the
internal implications. Intuitively, internal implications are those
parts of the action specification that detail the properties of the
associated meanings qua mental states (that is, as purely subjective
phenomena). The other version endorses all implications, including
the external implications. Once again speaking intuitively, the
external implications of action descriptions concern items that are
not in themselves thoughts or constituents of the agent s mind but
parts of the world outside it, towards which the action and the
meanings inherent in it are directed.
Utilising the format of prepositional attitudes (cf. p. 118), we can
express this distinction in a more precise and adequate manner. All
the meanings implicit in an action can be expressed as prepositional
attitudes. Sentences ascribing a prepositional attitude have the
general form, NN thinks that p , NN hopes that p , NN believes
that p , NN intends that p , etc. The content component p specifies
the proposition (or sentence) which the agent is said to have an
attitude towards; content components are sentences such as It is
going to rain soon , NN is about to get a promotion , NN has
stopped smoking , etc.
Now we can define the external implications of an action
description as those that follow from the content sentence alone,
when that sentence is considered in isolation. The internal
implications, on the other hand, are those that follow from the entire
prepositional attitude sentence, of the form NN believes that p .
Notice that this definition does not make the external implications a
subset of the internal implications, since the implications of p (the
external implications) are neutralised when p is embedded in the
sentential context of NN believes that& .
Let us illustrate with an example. If a native declares that he has cast
a spell in order to chase away evil spirits which possess his cattle, we
may construe this description in such a way that, by accepting it, we
admit that there are evil spirits around to be exorcised; we would
thereby have accepted an external implication. Alternatively, we may
interpret the specification in such a way that we are not committed to
the existence of evil spirits, but only to the agent s belief that such
spirits exist and to a desire on his part to chase them away. We are
committed to the existence of his mental states, but not to the existence
of real, external items as the objects of those mental states.
Armed with this distinction, we may reformulate the phenom-
enological version of constructivism as follows: the meanings with
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The Phenomenological Argument
which social agents inform their behaviour generate social facts in
so far as those facts comprise (the behaviour in conjunction with)
the internal implications of the agents meanings; sometimes
meanings generate facts even when unaccompanied by behaviour.
The phenomenological argument does not commit us to the
external implications of agents descriptions and thus to the claim
that these, too, generate facts. The only way one might defend a
more liberal policy would be by invoking some of the arguments
of Part One, to the effect that human agreement creates social fact
in a more wide-ranging sense. We have found reason to reject
those arguments.
Thus, we adopt the thesis that subjective meanings suffice to
constitute social facts (alone or together with accompanying
behaviour), as long as those facts involve only the internal
implications of the action descriptions (and, maybe, behaviour). When
social facts presuppose the truth of the external implications of action
descriptions, such as claims about real material or spiritual beings, the
agents meanings do not guarantee their reality; hence, the meanings
do not generate social facts of this kind.
Alfred Schutz and subsequent phenomenologically-oriented social
scientists have given currency to a terminology that blurs the distinction
between the external and internal implications of meanings,
occasionally leading to a mistaken endorsement of the external
implications. This is the terminology of Lebenswelt, or life-world (the
terminology was originally coined by Husserl). The Lebenswelt is
defined as the world-as-the-agent-views-it, a mode of description that
easily leads (as I believe it occasionally did for Schutz) to the
misconception that the Lebenswelt is indeed a particular world, or
sector of the world existing alongside other such sectors. This is the
doctrine of multiple realities , a profusion of worlds in which the agent
lives and among which he may move by means of shifts in his
attentional focus (Schutz 1945). Moreover, different cultures produce
different Lebenswelten. The native Lebenswelt is populated by witches,
gods and demons, whereas the Lebenswelt of the modern Westerner
includes neuroses and suppressed desires. The service that is rendered
by the term Lebenswelt in phenomenological social science is better
delivered by the straightforward notion of the (sum total of the) agent s
beliefs about the world. This mode of expression is proof against
ontological extravagance.
We have imposed a restriction upon the constructivist position
based upon the phenomenological argument, to the effect that
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The Narrow Arguments
meanings only generate social facts as far as their internal
implications go; we are never committed to any extrinsic
implications. It is tempting at this point to raise a further question:
are we invariably committed even to the intrinsic implications of
agents meanings? We must reformulate this question, however; as
it stands, it can only be answered, trivially, with a yes . Meanings
coincide perfectly with their internal implications; no wedge can
be driven in between the assumption that a person has (for
instance) a belief to this or that effect, and the internal
implications of that mental state, to the effect that such-and-such is
believed by him to be the case. This follows from the way we
defined internal implications as the logical consequences of such
forms of words as NN believes that& or NN intends that& . A
logical wedge may be driven in, however, between an agent s
meanings and his verbal avowals of those meanings, even when
sincere; the two are not the same by definition. So, the question
we want to ask is, Could we ever have reason for not accepting
agents explications of their own meanings? That is, could we ever
have reason to judge that a group of persons were misguided as to
the very subjective meaning of their own actions, suffering from
some collective illusion about the intentions and motives behind
their own conduct?
I believe the answer is yes. Certain customs in both Western and
native societies force us to reject the (sincere) self-descriptions of
the interactants, at least is so far as they claim to express the whole
truth. (The point about sincerity is crucial: the existence of false or
embellished descriptions of motives is a trivial fact.) In other words,
we are forced to draw a distinction between the meanings inherent
in an action and the agent s honest verbal explication of those
meanings. An example is demon possession. In tribal societies,
weird and socially disruptive behaviour in an individual may be
attributed to possession by demons, a diagnosis that is occasionally
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