This contradiction ”1. The universal right to free speech did not exist before the European Enlightenment, at which time it came into existence. 2. The universal right to free speech has always existed, but this right was recognized only at the time of the European Enlightenment.” draws on two common and conflicting intuitions: The human right to free speech exists because institutions, or the law, says so. In contrast, the human right to free speech can exist independently of institutions—these institutions (...) simply recognize a right we already have. John Searle argues that his status function account of human rights can preserve both intuitions by showing that the inconsistency between and is merely apparent. I argue that this solution works for tokens of human rights but not for types, while the contradiction concerns types. Hence, the status function account of human rights fails to preserve both intuitions. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Coeckelbergh’s (2023) performative view of moral status. Drawing parallels to Searle’s social ontology, two key claims of the performative view are identified: (1) Making a moral status claim is equivalent to making a moral status declaration. (2) A successful declaration establishes the institutional fact that the entity has moral status. Closer examination, however, reveals flaws in both claims. The second claim faces a dilemma: individual instances of moral status declaration are likely to fail because they do (...) not conform to established moral discourse conventions, and reliance on declarations becomes both unnecessary and implausible for explaining widespread collective recognition of moral status. As for the first claim, accepting it undermines the potential for meaningful moral disagreement. As a remedy, this paper proposed a shift in perspective: interpreting moral status claims as assertions rather than declarations. This refined perspective provides a more plausible framework for understanding moral status and avoids the pitfalls associated with the performative view. (shrink)

This article discusses John Searle’s status function account of human rights and Åsa Burman’s “A Critique of the Status Function Account of Human Rights.” While recognizing the validity of part of the critique, based on the distinction between types and tokens, the author argues that, nonetheless, one is not compelled to accept Burman’s conclusion, that “one must give up the status function account of human rights to explain how a human right can exist without collective recognition”. Specifically, the author accepts (...) Burman’s critique of Searle’s attempt to preserve the intuition that human rights have existed without collective recognition, but concludes offering three ways to understand human rights even in the absence of collective recognition, all of which preserve the status function account. (shrink)

In order to show the validity of here proposed conception of social ontology and its advantages over descriptive theories of social reality, which in the analysis of the socio-ontological status of human rights find only legally understood normativity as present in social reality, we will first lay out Searle?s interpretation of human rights. In the second step, we will introduce the methodical approach and basic concepts of our socio-ontological position, and explain the structure of the relationship between justice, law, morality, (...) social institutions and collective intentionality. At the end we will show how our theory of social ontology is better than Searle?s legal positivism in examining the ontological status of human rights. At the end, we show in what ways such a theory of social ontology more intuitively and with wider arguments explains the ontological status of institution of human rights than Searle?s legal positivism. (shrink)

In order to show the validity of here proposed conception of social ontology and its advantages over descriptive theories of social reality, which in the analysis of the socio-ontological status of human rights find only legally understood normativity as present in social reality, we will first lay out Searle’s interpretation of human rights. In the second step, we will introduce the methodical approach and basic concepts of our socio-ontological position, and explain the structure of the relationship between justice, law, morality, (...) social institutions and collective intentionality. At the end we will show how our theory of social ontology is better than Searle’s legal positivism in examining the ontological status of human rights. At the end, we show in what ways such a theory of social ontology more intuitively and with wider arguments explains the ontological status of institution of human rights than Searle’s legal positivism. (shrink)