Sociala helheter och sociala praktiker : att kunna delta i den sociala världen

In this essay I attempt to show that both the weak interpretation and the strong interpretation of what John Searle calls the principle of self–referentiality for social phenomena should be abandoned. This, I argue, is because they give rise to what I, following Burman (2023), call ”location problems” for opaque social phenomena and for social wholes, as well as a faulty understanding of social power. Instead, I propose that we understand social phenomena as constitued by social practices, in turn constituted by individuals who have the know–how necessary to participate in the social practices (in the sense that they are reliably able to do so), while not necessarily knowing that they are participating in them. In doing this, I draw on Robert B. Brandom’s notion of a social practice from Making it Explicit (1994).