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.
About 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the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley, until June 2019, when his status as professor emeritus was revoked because he was found to have violated the university’s sexual harassment policies.
More quotes from John Searle
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.
American philosopher
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.
American philosopher
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.
American philosopher
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.
American philosopher
Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.
American philosopher
I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing.
American philosopher
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.
American philosopher
My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business.
American philosopher
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.
American philosopher
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.”
American philosopher
Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.
American philosopher
In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.
American philosopher