Arthur Keith
British anatomist and anthropologist (1866-1955)
John Rogers Searleis an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was 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the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley, until June 2019, when his status as professor emeritus was revoked because he was found to have violated the university’s sexual harassment policies.
Table of Contents
About the John Searle
John Rogers Searleis an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was 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the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley, until June 2019, when his status as professor emeritus was revoked because he was found to have violated the university’s sexual harassment policies.
As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Searle was secretary of “Students against Joseph McCarthy”. He received all his university degrees, BA, MA, and DPhil, from the University of Oxford, where he held his first faculty positions. Later, at UC Berkeley, he became the first tenured professor to join the 1964-1965 Free Speech Movement. In the late 1980s, Searle challenged the restrictions of Berkeley’s 1980 rent stabilization ordinance. Following what came to be known as the California Supreme Court’s “Searle Decision” of 1990, Berkeley changed its rent control policy, leading to large rent increases between 1991 and 1994.
In 2000, Searle received the Jean Nicod Prize; in 2004, the National Humanities Medal; and in 2006, the Mind & Brain Prize. In 2010 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. Searle’s early work on speech acts, influenced by J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein, helped establish his reputation. His notable concepts include the “Chinese room” argument against “strong” artificial intelligence.
12 Quotes by John Searle
- 1.
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.
John SearleAmerican philosopher
- 2.
Berkeley had a liberal element in the student body who tended to be quite active. I think that’s in general a feature of intellectually active places.
John SearleAmerican philosopher
- 3.
Our tools are extensions of our purposes, and so we find it natural to make metaphorical attributions of intentionality to them; but I take it no philosophical ice is cut by such examples.
John SearleAmerican philosopher
- 4.
We often attribute ‘understanding’ and other cognitive predicates by metaphor and analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but nothing is proved by such attributions.
John SearleAmerican philosopher
- 5.
Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.
John SearleAmerican philosopher
- 6.
I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing.
John SearleAmerican philosopher
- 7.
An utterance can have Intentionality, just as a belief has Intentionality, but whereas the Intentionality of the belief is intrinsic the Intentionality of the utterance is derived.
John SearleAmerican philosopher
- 8.
My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business.
John SearleAmerican philosopher
- 9.
There are clear cases in which “understanding” literally applies and clear cases in which it does not apply; and these two sorts of cases are all I need for this argument.
John SearleAmerican philosopher
- 10.
I want to block some common misunderstandings about “understanding”: In many of these discussions one finds a lot of fancy footwork about the word “understanding.”
John SearleAmerican philosopher
- 11.
Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.
John SearleAmerican philosopher
- 12.
In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.
John SearleAmerican philosopher