 Guala’s account has implications for controversies concerning alleged differences between the natural sciences and the social sciences and, specifically, for the pluralist view that unlike natural entities, social entities, such as institutions, are mind-dependent (Searle 2010). For example, the fact that a dollar bill is money and not merely paper, depends on a collective belief that it can be used as a medium of exchange. By contrast, a molecule of water is water irrespective of anyone’s belief. At this point Guala invokes a distinction between causal dependence and ontological dependence. Dollar bills are causally dependent on beliefs but not ontologically dependent. Since the causal dependence of social entities on beliefs and the like is consistent with the causal dependence of natural entities on one another and on beliefs etc., the mind-dependence of social entities does not imply a pluralist view of the natural sciences and the social sciences. A monist conception is admissible. 