As it is well-known, Searle's Background is the set of abilities, capacities, tendencies, and dispositions that humans have and that are not themselves intentional states. The background does not function the same way a representational Intentional world does, but it is the necessary pre-condition for Intentionality. Now, rationality presupposes intentionality, even if it is We-intentionality.

Searle's background provides similarities with Wittgenstein's form of life. A form of life is a set of activities which provides to human agents a specific language game and hence - as we shall point out - some form of We-rationality. Now, the purpose of our paper is to investigate if this kind of Wittgenstein-Searle rationality is also present in Sraffa, especially in some of his Unpublished Papers dedicated to language, industry or conventions. Our answer is positive and modifies our point of view of Sraffa's economics.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE sponsored by Department of Economics Faculty of Economics University of Bergamo THE OTHER SRAFFA. SURPRISES IN THE ARCHIVE? December 21-22, 2010 aula 3, via Salvecchio 19 University of Bergamo - Bergamo Alta, Italy