Searle's Background: comments on Runde and Faulkner

Searle's notion of the Background, a set of non-intentional mental states which makes intentionality possible, is receiving increasing interest from social theorists. This paper points out two commitments that the notion entails of which social theorists should be wary. The first is Searle's belief that 'Background abilities are not dependent on how things in fact work in the world'. This position is highly counter-intuitive - a person's ability to drive results from her having spent time operating automobiles - and derives from Searle's position, also implausible, that the content of a thought is independent of the object that that thought is about. The second is that invoking the Background is required in order to explain human behaviour which is inconsistent with utility theory: that position is unconvincing once one realizes that it is possible to conceive of rationality on lines alternative to those of utility maximization - as valid inference.