Phil Hoyeck ✓

@PAHoyeck

I teach philosophy. I'm interested in a lot of things but am constantly uncertain about everything.

15 577Followers

1 783Following

62 720Posts total

211.8KViews on collected posts

Against accounts of the same size

21 posts from the last 90 days, next to the 10K–100K follower range. shown to more people than peers of the same size.

Median views5 407this account2 968median for 10K–100K

Reach, %34.71%this account9.18%median for 10K–100K

Engagement, %1.18%this account1.42%median for 10K–100K

Metric	This account	Median for 10K–100K	Ratio
Median views per post	5 407	2 968	1.82×
Reach (views ÷ followers)	34.71%	9.18%	3.78×
Engagement rate	1.18%	1.42%	0.83×

Others in this range → Compare with another account → How these benchmarks are built →

Growth & engagement

How the posts we collected actually performed: views and reaction rate post by post, what the audience did with them, and where the follower count goes.

Views per post

5.9K31 Aug

5.4K

15.4K

5K

4.7K

4.2K

3.9K

3.8K

3.6K

4K

6.9K

3.4K

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Last 14 collected posts, oldest on the left. The scale is logarithmic: one post can outrun the rest a hundred times over.

Engagement rate per post

0.96%31 Aug

1.28%

0.37%

0.99%

0.91%

1.02%

1.18%

1.25%

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1.80%

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Reactions — likes, reposts, replies and quotes — divided by views. Median for 10K–100K accounts is 1.42%.

What the audience does

Likes56.9%3 146 in total

Reposts4.2%234 in total

Replies2.2%123 in total

Quotes0.8%46 in total

Bookmarks35.8%1 980 in total

Share of every reaction we collected for this account. Replies mean argument, reposts mean endorsement, bookmarks mean the post was worth keeping.

The follower curve appears once this account has two daily snapshots — we take one a day, and this one is on its first.

Latest posts

@PAHoyeck Huh. I only knew Searle from the philosophy of mind. I had no idea that he also did good work. 1.3K views · 20 likes · 0 reposts · 2 replies 31 Aug 2026 Anyway, there's a lot more that could be said, of course, this is just a short primer with some explanations. But hopefully it makes some of the main ideas of the book clear. 20/20 3.3K views · 67 likes · 1 reposts · 9 replies 31 Aug 2026 But that doesn’t follow! It means it’s not (Physically? Conceptually? Metaphysically?) impossible to change them. But there is, for example, no process I know of by which I, or even any sizeable group of people, could reliably change the location of our border with America. 19/ 3.4K views · 48 likes · 0 reposts · 9 replies 31 Aug 2026 Fourth, saying that institutional facts are constituted by agreement is not to say that they’re under our control. This seems to me to be an error Marx makes: he seems to think that once we understand social relations as our creations, we can change them. 18/ 6.9K views · 60 likes · 2 reposts · 7 replies 31 Aug 2026 There’s an interesting Foucauldian dimension here, expect that which Foucault makes power sound very sinister, Searle is much more sanguine: “Everything we value in civilization requires the creation and maintenance of institutional power relations” (p. 94). 17/ 4K views · 63 likes · 2 reposts · 5 replies 31 Aug 2026 And of course, for these powers to be effective, there must be some way for the relevant conventions to replicate themselves (e.g., via education, upbringing) and for violations to be punished (e.g., via fines or jail time). 16/ 3.6K views · 44 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 31 Aug 2026 Third, this means that institutional facts are, in a sense, constituted by power. To say that we must drive on the right-hand side of the road is to say that individuals have certain powers (they can drive there) and certain others (they can’t drive on the left-hand side). 15/ 3.8K views · 45 likes · 0 reposts · 2 replies 31 Aug 2026 All it means is that they only exist because there are people who agree with them. Whether they will continue to exist depends in large part on how well those people will manage to make those conventions plausible to others, to enforce them on the reticent, etc. 14/ 3.9K views · 44 likes · 1 reposts · 1 replies 31 Aug 2026 Second, that institutional facts are constituted by agreement obviously does not imply that everyone agrees. There are objectors to virtually every convention in existence, from the use of currency to the existence of borders to the rules of the road. 13/ 4.2K views · 42 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 31 Aug 2026 There is no point at which anyone in Canada signed a document certifying that they agreed to drive on the right-hand side of the road and not the left. But we do all, or almost all, agree to do it: we do, in fact, drive on the right-hand side of the road. 12/ 4.7K views · 42 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 31 Aug 2026 That’s the general shape of the theory. Now for some clarifications. First, that institutional facts are constituted by collective agreement obviously does not imply that the agreement has to be explicit! In almost all cases, agreement is tacit. 11/ 5K views · 47 likes · 0 reposts · 2 replies 31 Aug 2026 What makes this piece of metal in my hand a toonie? Well, that it has been assigned a function (of counting as two dollars) by collective agreement (of the nation of Canada) in accordance with some rule (having been minted via the right processes). 10/ 15.4K views · 54 likes · 0 reposts · 2 replies 31 Aug 2026 This gives us a general account of social construction. An institutional fact is established when some previously existing fact is assigned a function (assignment of function) that is shared (collective intentionality) in accordance with some rule (constitutive rule). 9/ 5.4K views · 66 likes · 0 reposts · 3 replies 31 Aug 2026 The third and last is constitutive rules, i.e., rules that make possible certain kinds of activities. These have the form “X counts as Y in context C.” For example, such and such a move counts as a checkmate in the context of a game of chess. 8/ 5.9K views · 54 likes · 0 reposts · 1 replies 31 Aug 2026 The second is collective intentionality, i.e., the ability to share intentional states with others. This occurs, e.g., when multiple people are playing a team sport. Each understands his individual actions in terms of a collective goal: “We are playing a game of soccer.” 7/ 5.9K views · 57 likes · 1 reposts · 3 replies 31 Aug 2026 The first is assignment of function, i.e., the capacity to impose functions on objects. This occurs, e.g., when we treat a tree as a boundary-marker. It is then true to say that the tree is a boundary marker, even though this is obviously not an intrinsic property of the tree. 6/ 6.2K views · 65 likes · 1 reposts · 1 replies 31 Aug 2026 This is what makes it possible to talk of “social construction.” Institutional facts really are facts, but at the same time, they’re constituted by, or constructed by, human agreement. According to Searle, explaining social construction requires three elements. 5/ 6.6K views · 72 likes · 0 reposts · 2 replies 31 Aug 2026 At the same time, though, such facts are epistemically objective in the sense that judgments about them are independent of any particular observer: The location of the American border, for example, does not depend on my, or anyone else’s, beliefs, preferences, or intentions 4/ 7.1K views · 75 likes · 0 reposts · 2 replies 31 Aug 2026 These are all what he calls “institutional facts.” Institutional facts are ontologically subjective in the sense that they depend on the mental phenomena of human beings. To illustrate, if we all agreed to move the location for the American border, well, then it would move. 3/ 7.5K views · 90 likes · 0 reposts · 3 replies 31 Aug 2026 Searle starts from an observation: there are facts that, though objective features of reality, are nonetheless products of human agreement. Think, for example, of facts about money, marriages, property, borders, and governments, to name but a small selection. 2/ 8.1K views · 121 likes · 3 reposts · 1 replies 31 Aug 2026 People love to talk about social construction, but nobody seems to have a clear account of what they mean by it. So here’s a primer John Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality, one of my all-time favourite works of philosophy. 1/ https://t.co/ZF1wIrNN3t 99.8K views · 2K likes · 223 reposts · 65 replies 31 Aug 2026

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