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John Searle Biography

John Rogers Searle (/sɜːrl/; born 31 July 1932) is an American philosopher. He is currently Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Language and Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy, he began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959.

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John Searle Quotes

Well, what does "good" mean anyway. . . ? As Wittgenstein suggested, "good," like "game," has a family of meanings. Prominent among them is this one: "meets the criteria or standards of assessment or evaluation.

Assessment, Game, Games, Mean, Suggested, Wittgenstein

How do we get from electrons to elections and from protons to presidents?

Election, Elections, Electrons, President, Presidents, Proton

If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself

Clearly, Ifs, Say, Understand

Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.

Axiom, Axioms, Exist, Existence, Referred

Dualism makes the problem insoluble; materialism denies the existence of any phenomenon to study, and hence of any problem.

Dualism, Insoluble, Materialism, Problem, Study

The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else.

Indirect, Mean, Problem, Speaker, Speech

Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

Conscious, Objectivity, Subjectivity, Thing

The reason that no computer program can ever be a mind is simply that a computer program is only syntactical, and minds are more than syntactical. Minds are semantical, in the sense that they have more than a formal structure, they have a content.

Computer, Content, Mind, Reason

There is no success or failure in Nature.

Failure, Nature, Success, Success Or Failure

Darwin's greatest achievement was to show that the appearance of purpose, planning, teleology (design), and intentionality in the origin and development of human and animal species was entirely an illusion. The illusion could be explained by evolutionary processes that contained no such purpose at all. But the spread of ideas through imitation required the whole apparatus of human consciousness and intentionality

Animal, Design, Ideas, Illusion, Origin, Planning

Materialism ends up denying the existence of any irreducible subjective qualitative states of sentience or awareness.

Awareness, Ends, Materialism, Sentience, States

You do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others.

Ifs, Relation, See, Tradition, Understand

In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.

Cases, Decision, Matter, Simple

In the performance of an illocutionary act in the literal utterance of a sentence, the speaker intends to produce a certain effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect; and furthermore, if he is using the words literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the rules for using the expressions he utters associate the expression with the production of that effect.

Expression, Expressions, Facts, Literal, Mean, Utters

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

Concerned, Follow, Say, Simple, Style, Trying

Nowadays nobody bothers, and it is considered in slightly bad taste to even raise the question of God's existence. Matters of religion are like matters of sexual preference: they are not discussed in public, and even the abstract questions are discussed only by bores.

Abstract, Bothers, Matter, Matters, Public, Taste

You can't *discover* that the brain is a digital computer. You can only *interpret* the brain as a digital computer.

Brain, Computer, Digital, Discover, Interpret

Many people mistakenly suppose that the essence of consciousness is that of a control mechanism

Consciousness, Essence, Mistakenly, People, Suppose

The general nature of the speech act fallacy can be stated as follows, using "good" as our example. Calling something good is characteristically praising or commending or recommending it, etc. But it is a fallacy to infer from this that the meaning of "good" is explained by saying it is used to perform the act of commendation.

Act, Calling, Example, Nature, Saying, Speech

The assertion fallacy. . . is the fallacy of confusing the conditions for the performance of the speech act of assertion with the analysis of the meaning of particular words occurring in certain assertions.

Analysis, Confusing, Particular, Performance, Speech, Words

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