Searle question

Tahir Wood twood at uwc.ac.za
Tue May 31 11:33:23 UTC 2011


I wonder if anyone can enlighten me concerning Searle's (1969) distinction between regulative and constitutive rules. 

It has been said that this distinction goes back to Kant, although in Searle's case it has also been said it comes via the influence of Rawls and his 1955 paper 'Two concepts of rules'.

What I find a little puzzling is the fact that Searle's argument is very close to that of Rawls, where regulative corresponds roughly to 'summary' and constitutive corresponds to 'practice' in Rawls. But why does he use terms that have been derived from Kant for this, rather than just adopting Rawls's terminology?

Kant's use of the terms regulative and constitutive and their distinction is fairly sparse and scattered. And it refers to a distinction that (as far as I can see) is very different from that of Searle and Rawls. For Kant 'constitutive' refers to the use of the categories and it concerns their application in empirical judgments (Understanding); whereas the 'regulative' principle (of Reason) operates only on the Understanding, never upon empirical realities themselves. 

There must be some reason why Searle chose Kant's terminology but applied it to Rawls's distinction, with which it seems to have so little in common. If anyone could shed light on this, and especially if there are any references to works that do so, I would be very grateful.

Tahir

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