'John Rogers Searle' (born
July 31 1932 in
Denver, Colorado) is the Slusser
Professor of
Philosophy at the
University of California, Berkeley. He is widely noted for contributions to the
philosophy of language and the
philosophy of mind, and also for his account of social reality. He was awarded the
Jean Nicod Prize and the Jovellanos Prize in 2000, and the
National Humanities Medal in 2004.
Searle was also the first tenured professor to join the
Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. He later published a book on that period of campus unrest, ''
The Campus War: A Sympathetic Look At the University in Agony'' (1971).
He frequently comments on philosophical and political topics for the ''
New York Review of Books''. His reviews on the topic of consciousness were collected as ''The Mystery of Consciousness'' (1997).
Searle was educated at
Christ Church,
Oxford University on a
Rhodes Scholarship. He often publishes under the name "J. R. Searle."
Philosophy
Speech acts
Searle's early work, which to a great extent established his reputation as an estimable philosopher, was on
speech acts. It builts upon the efforts of his Oxford teachers
J. L. Austin and
P. F. Strawson. In particular Searle's ''Speech Acts'' sets out to take up and develop Austin's account of
illocutionary acts, as exposed in ''
How To Do Things with Words''.
According to Searle's account illocutionary acts consist of an ''illocutionary force'' (the kind of illocutionary act the utterance constitutes, or the mode in which a given proposition is presented) and a ''propositional content'' (a propositional specification of the act, or the mode). Thus in Searle's analysis the sentences (Searle 1969, 22)
# Sam smokes habitually.
# Does Sam smoke habitually?
# Sam, smoke habitually!
# Would that Sam smoked habitually!
each indicate the same propositional content (Sam smoking) but differ in the illocutionary force indicated (a statement, a question, a command and an expression of desire, respectively).
Furthermore, speech acts have ''conditions of satisfaction'' and a ''
direction of fit''. For example, the statement "John bought two candy bars" is satisfied if it is true, i.e. John did buy two candy bars. By contrast, the command "John, buy two candy bars" is satisfied only if John carries out the action of purchasing two candy bars. Searle refers to the first as having the ''word-to-world'' direction of fit, since the words are supposed to change to accurately represent the world, and the second as having the ''world-to-word'' direction of fit, since the world is supposed to change to match the words. (There is also the double direction of fit, in which the relationship goes both ways, and the null or zero direction of fit, in which it goes neither.)
Searle's speech-act theory has been challenged by several thinkers, and in a variety of ways. A wide-ranging critique is in F C Doerge
''Illocutionary Acts''.
[1] Whole collections of articles referring to Searle's account are: Burkhardt 1990
[2] and Lepore / van Gulick 1991.
[3] See also Jacques Derrida's ''Limited Inc.''
[4] and Searle's brief reply in ''The Construction of Social Reality''.
[5]
Intentionality and the Background
In ''Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind'' (1983), Searle generalized this system to address the issue of
intentionality. (Intentionality, not to be confused with
intensionality-with-an-s, is a technical philosophical term meaning roughly ''aboutness''. It refers to mental states and their associated objects, such as written words, which refer to things in the world. Thus being anxious about a deadline is an intentional state, while free-floating anxiety is a non-intentional one. Intending to do something is just one kind of intentionality in this sense.) Searle argues that intentional states are a simple extension of his theory of speech acts. For example, believing John has two candy bars (which Searle sometimes writes as "Bel(John has two candy bars)") is an intentional state with the psychological mode of belief and the propositional content that John has two candy bars. Beliefs have the conditions of satisfaction that they are true and the mind-to-world direction of fit.
He also introduces a technical term, ''the Background'',
[6] which has been the source of much philosophical discussion ("though I have been arguing for this thesis for almost twenty years," Searle writes,
[7] "many people whose opinions I respect still disagree with me about it"). The Background is the set of abilities, capacities, tendencies, and dispositions that humans have and that are not themselves intentional states. Thus, when someone asks us to "cut the cake" we know to use a knife and when someone asks us to "cut the grass" we know to use a lawnmower (and not vice versa), even though the actual request did not include this detail. Searle sometimes supplements the Background with the concept of ''the Network'', one's network of other beliefs, desires, and other intentional states necessary for any particular intentional state to make sense. Searle argues that the Background is similar to the concepts of many other thinkers, including
Wittgenstein's
private language argument ("the work of the later Wittgenstein is in large part about the Background"
[8]) and
Bourdieu's ''
habitus''.
To give an example, two chess players might be engaged in a bitter struggle at the board, but they share all sorts of Background presuppositions: that they will take turns to move, that no-one else will intervene, that they are both playing to the same rules, that the fire alarm won't go off, that the board won't suddenly disintegrate, that their opponent won't magically turn into a grapefruit, and so on indefinitely. As most of these possibilites won't have occurred to either player,
[9] Searle thinks the Background must be unconscious, though elements of it can be called to consciousness (if the fire alarm does go off, say).
Consciousness
Searle expanded his scope from intentionality to all of consciousness, culminating with his book ''The Rediscovery of the Mind'' (1992). Searle argues that, starting with the influential behaviorists, much of modern philosophy has tried to deny the existence of consciousness, with little success. In ''Intentionality'', he parodies several alternative theories of consciousness by replacing their accounts of intentionality with comparable accounts of the hand:
:No one would think of saying, for example, "Having a hand is just being disposed to certain sorts of behavior such as grasping" (manual
behaviorism), or "Hands can be defined entirely in terms of their causes and effects" (manual
functionalism), or "For a system to have a hand is just for it to be in a certain computer state with the right sorts of inputs and outputs" (manual
Turing machine functionalism), or "Saying that a system has hands is just adopting a certain stance toward it" (the
manual stance). (p. 263)
Searle argues that philosophy has been trapped by a
false dichotomy: on the one hand, the world consists of nothing but objective particles in fields of force, yet, on the other, consciousness is clearly a subjective first-person experience.
Dualists deny the first, but our current knowledge of
physics makes their position seem absurdly unlikely, so philosophy, starting with behaviorists, has denied the second. But denying the second has led to endless problems and thus to endless revisions of behaviorism (with functionalism being the one currently in vogue).
Searle says simply that both are true: conscious is a real subjective experience, caused by the physical processes of the brain. (A view which he suggests might be called ''
biological naturalism'' if one requires a name.)
Ontological subjectivity
Searle argues that critics like
Dennett, who insist that discussing subjectivity is unscientific (since science is supposed to be objective), are making a
category error. Science's goal is to make statements which are ''epistemically objective'', i.e. whose truth can be discovered and evaluated by any interested party. (By contrast,
value judgments are ''epistemically subjective''.) Thus, "
McKinley is higher than
Everest" is epistemically objective while "
McKinley is prettier than
Everest" is epistemically subjective.
But, in addition, there are certain things (including all conscious experiences) which are ''ontologically subjective'', i.e. are experienced subjectively. For example, back pains are epistemically objective -- whether someone is having back pain is an objective fact that medical science happily discusses -- but the pain itself is ontologically subjective; the pain is only experienced by the person having it.
Artificial Intelligence
:''See also:
Strong AI vs. Weak AI''
A consequence of biological naturalism is that if we want to create a conscious being, we will have to duplicate whatever physical processes the brain does to cause consciousness. Searle thus disagrees with many believers in Strong AI, who think that a conscious being can be created by executing the right computer software.
Searle is very well known for his so-called "
Chinese room" argument, which purports to prove strong AI is impossible: Assume you do not speak Chinese and imagine yourself in a room with two slits, a book, and some scratch paper. Someone slides you some Chinese characters through the first slit, you follow the instructions in the book, write what it says on the scratch paper, and slide the resulting sheet out the second slit. To people on the outside world, it appears the room speaks Chinese -- they slide Chinese statements in one slit and get valid responses in return -- yet you do not understand a word of Chinese. Ergo, no computer can ever understand Chinese, since all it can do is the same syntactic manipulations as a man in the Chinese room.
The argument is highly controversial, with dozens of papers claiming to refute it. Among the many replies are that while the man does not understand Chinese, the "system as a whole" does (the systems reply).
Since then, Searle has come up with a stronger argument against strong AI. Strong AI proponents claim that anything that carries out the same informational processes as a human is also conscious. Thus, if we wrote a computer program that was conscious, we could run that computer program on, say, a system of ping-pong balls and beer cups and the system would be equally conscious, because it was running the same information processes.
Searle argues that this is impossible, since consciousness is a physical property, like digestion or fire. No matter how good a simulation of digestion you build on the computer, it will not digest anything; no matter how well you simulate fire, nothing will get burnt. By contrast, informational processes are ''observer-relative'': observers pick out certain patterns in the world and consider them information processes, but information processes are not things-in-the-world themselves. Since they do not exist at a physical level, Searle argues, they cannot have ''causal efficacy'' and thus cannot cause consciousness. There is no physical law, Searle insists, that can see the equivalence between a personal computer, a series of ping-pong balls and beer cans, and a pipe-and-water system all implementing the same program.
Some Strong AI proponents respond by arguing that physics will eventually develop a way of discovering informational processes at the physical level.
Social reality
Searle extended his inquiries into observer-relative phenomena by trying to understand social reality. Searle begins by arguing collective intentionality (e.g. "we're going for a walk") is a distinct form of intentionality, not simply reducible to individual intentionality (e.g. "I'm going for a walk with him and I think he thinks he's going for a walk with me and thinks I think I'm going for a walk with him and ..."). However, he believes collective intentionality is sustained by individual people: each person thinks "we're going for a walk", there's no "group mind" that has this thought.
Searle's ''The Construction of Social Reality'' (1997) addresses the mystery of how social constructs like "baseball" or "money" can exist in a world consisting only of fields of force. Searle distinguishes between ''brute facts'', like the height of a mountain, and ''institutional facts'', like the score of a baseball game. He argues institutional facts arise out of collective intentionality through logical rules of the form "X counts as Y in C". Thus, for example, filling out a ballot counts as a vote in a polling place, getting so many votes counts as a victory in an election, getting a victory counts as being elected president in the presidential race, etc.
Rationality
In ''Rationality in Action'' (2001), Searle argues that standard notions of rationality are badly flawed. According to what he calls the Classical Model, rationality is seen as something like a train track: you get on at one point with your beliefs and desires and the rules of rationality compel you all the way to a conclusion.
Searle briefly critiques one particular set of these rules: those of mathematical
decision theory. He points out that its axioms require that anyone who valued a quarter and their life would, at some odds, bet their life for a quarter. Searle insists he would never do this and believes that this is perfectly rational.
But most of his attack is against the larger model. He believes it is badly flawed in every detail. First, he argues that reasons don't cause you to do anything, in the sense that having the reasons is sufficient to force you to do the thing. This is because in any decision we have the experience of the ''gap'' between our reasons and our actions. When one decides to vote, we do not simply determine that we care most about economic policy and that we prefer candidate Jones's economic policy. We also have to make an effort to cast our vote. It is this gap that makes us think we have ''
freedom of the will''.
Second, he believes rationality is not a system of rules, but more of an adverb. We see certain behavior as rational, no matter what its source, and our system of rules derives form finding patterns in what we see as rational.
Third, Searle believes we can rationally do things that don't result from our own desires. It is widely believed that one cannot derive an "ought" from an "is", i.e. that facts about how the world is can never tell you what you should do. By contrast, Searle believes the fact that you promised to do something means you should do it. Furthermore, he believes that this provides a desire-independent reason for an action -- if you order a drink at a bar, you should pay for it even if you have no desire to. This argument, which he first made in his paper, "How to Derive 'Ought' from 'Is'" (1964)
[10], is highly controversial.
Fourth, Searle argues that much of rational deliberation involves adjusting our (often inconsistent) patterns of desires to decide between outcomes, not the other way around. While in the Classical Model, one would start from a desire to go to Paris greater than that of saving money and calculate the cheapest way to get there, in reality people balance the niceness of Paris against the costs of travel to decide which desire (visiting Paris or saving money) they value more.
Regard and criticism
Searle's books are written in a clear and conversational style, with the goal that the educated layperson should be able to understand them and follow their argument. However, they often make broad new claims, rarely refer to the works of other philosophers, and coin numerous new terms for things, leading many to insist Searle is frustratingly arrogant.
Searle owns a large amount of property in
Berkeley, California. He is well-known for his 1980s lawsuit which led the California Supreme Court to overturn the city's rent control policy in what came to be known as the "Searle Decision".
[11] The city government claimed this led to "significantly increased rent levels in Berkeley".
[12]
See also
★
Pragmatics
★
Practical reason
★
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
★
Strong AI vs. Weak AI
★
List of Jean Nicod Prize laureates
★
Language/action perspective
References
1. Doerge (Friedrich Christoph), ''Illocutionary Acts - Austin's Account and What Searle Made Out of It'' Tuebingen University (2006) [1]
2. Burkhardt, Armin (ed.), Speech Acts, Meaning and Intentions: Critical Approaches to the Philosophy of John R. Searle. Berlin / New York 1990.
3. Lepore, Ernest / van Gulick, Robert (eds): John Searle and his Critics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991.
4. Jacques Derrida. ''Limited Inc.''. Evanston, Il.: Northwestern University Press, 1988, 2000.
5. Searle ''The Construction of Social Reality'' (1995) p.157-160
6. Searle, ''Intentionality'' (1983); ''The Rediscovery of the Mind'' (1992) ch. 8
7. "Literary Theory and Its Discontents", ''New Literary History'', 640
8. Searle, ''The Rediscovery of the Mind'' (1992) p.177
9. ibid, p.185
10. John Searle, "How to Derive 'Ought' from 'Is'", ''The Philosophical Review'', '73':1 (January 1964), 43-58
11. See ''Searle v. City of Berkeley Rent Stabilization Bd.'' (1988) 197 Cal.App.3d 1251, 1253 [243 Cal.Rptr. 449]
12. City of Berkeley, "Housing Element"
Further reading
By John Searle:
★ ''Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of language'', (1969)
★ ''The Campus War'', (1971)
★ ''Expression and Meaning'', (1979)
★
★ Introduction
★
★ Origins of the essays
★
★ 1. A taxonomy of illocutionary acts
★
★ 2. Indirect speech acts
★
★ 3. The logical status of fictional discourse
★
★ 4. Metaphor
★
★ 5. Literal meaning
★
★ 6. Referential and attributive
★
★ 7. Speech acts and recent linguistics
★
"Minds, Brains and Programs", ''The Behavioral and Brain Sciences''.3, pp. 417-424. (1980)
★ ''Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind'' (1983), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-52127302-1
★ ''Minds, Brains and Science'' (1984), Harvard University Press, hardcover: ISBN 0-67457631-4, paperback: ISBN 0-67457633-0
★
"Is the Brain a Digital Computer?" (1990) Presidential Address to the American Philosophical Association
★ "Collective Intentions and Actions".(1990) in ''Intentions in Communication'' J. M. P. R. Cohen, & M. and E. Pollack. Cambridge, Mass.: . MIT Press: 401-416.
★ ''The Rediscovery of the Mind'' (1992) ISBN 0-262-69154-X
★ ''The Construction of Social Reality'' (1995)
★ ''The Mystery of Consciousness'', Granta Books, (1997) hardcover: ISBN 1-86207122-5, New York Review Books paperback: ISBN 0-94032206-4
★
Consciousness Ann. Rev. Neurosci. (2000) 23:557-78. Review.
★ ''Rationality in Action'', MIT Press, (2001) – contains (among other things) Searle's account of
akrasia
★ ''Consciousness and Language'' (2002), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-52159744-7
★ ''Mind: A Brief Introduction'' (2004), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-515733-8
★ ''Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language and Political Power'' (2007), Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-13752-4
★ M. Bennett,
D. Dennett,
P. Hacker, J. Searle, ''Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind and Language'' (2007), Columbia University Press, ISBN 0231140444
★
The Storm Over the University
★ Doerge (2006), Friedrich Christoph: ''Illocutionary Acts - Austin's Account and What Searle Made Out of It''. Tuebingen: Tuebingen University. http://w210.ub.uni-tuebingen.de/dbt/volltexte/2006/2273/
Bibliography
★ ''Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language'' (1969)
★ ''The Campus War: A Sympathetic Look at the University in Agony'' (political commentary; 1971)
★ ''Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts'' (essay collection; 1979)
★ ''Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind'' (1983)
★ ''Minds, Brains and Science: The 1984 Reith Lectures'' (lecture collection; 1984)
★ ''John Searle and His Critics'' (Ernest Lepore and Robert Van Gulick, eds.; 1991)
★ ''The Rediscovery of the Mind'' (1992)
★ ''The Construction of Social Reality'' (1995)
★ ''The Mystery of Consciousness'' (review collection; 1997)
★ ''Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World'' (summary of earlier work; 1998)
★ ''Rationality in Action'' (2001)
★ ''Consciousness and Language'' (essay collection; 2002)
★ ''Freedom and Neurobiology'' (lecture collection; 2004)
★ ''Mind: A Brief Introduction'' (summary of work in philosophy of mind; 2004)
External links
★
★
Searle's homepage at UC Berkeley
★
Conversations with Searle. interview in
Conversations with History series. Available in
webcast and
podcast.
★
Radio interview on
Philosophy Talk
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