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Documentality


Documentality is the theory of documents that underlies the ontology of social reality put forward by the Italian philosopher Maurizio Ferraris (see Ferraris 2007, 2008, 2009a and 2009b). The theory gives to documents a central position within the sphere of social objects, conceived as distinct from physical and ideal objects. Ferraris argues that social objects are "social acts that have been inscribed on some kind of support", be it a paper document, a magnetic support, or even memory in people's heads (e.g. in the case of the promises we make every day). Thus the constitutive rule of social objects is that Object = Inscribed Act. Therefore, documents as inscriptions possessing social relevance and value embody the essential and prototypical features of any social object, and it is on this basis that it is possible to develop an ontology capable of classifying documents and their selective storage, beginning with the grand divide between strong documents (inscriptions of acts), which make up social objects in the full sense, and weak documents (recordings of facts), which are secondary derivatives and of lesser importance. This theory is inspired, on the one hand, by the reflection on the centrality of writing developed by Jacques Derrida (1967, 1972) and, on the other hand, by the theory of social acts devised by Adolf Reinach (1913) and the theory of linguistic acts by John L. Austin (1962).

In the contemporary debate, one of the main theories of social objects has been proposed by the American philosopher John R. Searle, in particular in his book The Construction of Social Reality (1995). Searle's ontology recognizes the sphere of social objects, defining them as higher order objects with respect to physical objects, in accordance with the rule

X counts as Y in C

meaning that the physical object X, for instance a colored piece of paper, counts as Y, a 10 euro banknote, in context C, the Europe of the year 2010. According to Searle, from the iteration of this simple rule the whole complexity of social reality is derived.


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