John Searle John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and the Slusser Professor of Philosophy and Mills Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley. Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of more..more..

“ John Searle: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.” #Critics and Criticism#Critics and Criticism

“ John Searle:In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on. #Decisions #Decisions

“ John Searle:My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business. #Business#Business

“ John Searle:There is probably no more abused a term in the history of philosophy than “representation,” and my use of this term differs both from its use in traditional philosophy and from its use in contemporary cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence.... The sense of “representation” in question is meant to be entirely exhausted by the analogy with speech acts: the sense of “represent” in which a belief represents its conditions of satisfaction is the same sense in which a statement represents its conditions of satisfaction. To say that a belief is a representation is simply to say that it has a propositional content and a psychological mode. #Food and Eating#Food and Eating

“ John Searle: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." #Understanding #Understanding

“ John Searle:Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed. #Mind#Mind

“ John Searle:Just acquiring this amount of "education" will not, by itself, make you an educated person, even less will it give you what Oakeshott calls "judgment." But if the manner of instruction is adequate, the student should be able to acquire this much knowledge in a way that combines intellectual openness, critical scrutiny, and logical clarity. If so, learning will not stop when the student leaves the university. #Education #Education

“ John Searle:Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you need to acquire the skills of writing and speaking that make for candor, rigor, and clarity. You cannot think clearly if you cannot speak and write clearly. #Writers and Writing#Writers and Writing

“ John Searle: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. #Action#Action

“ John Searle:I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing. #Computers #Computers

“ John Searle: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. #Speakers and Speaking#Speakers and Speaking

“ John Searle: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. #Praise#Praise

“ John Searle:The student should have enough knowledge of his or her cultural tradition to know how it got to be the way it is. This involves both political and social history, on the one hand, as well as the mastery of some of the great philosophical and literary texts of the culture on the other. It involves reading not only texts that are of great value, like those of Plato, but many less valuable that have been influential, such as the works of Marx. For the United States, the dominant tradition is, and for the foreseeable future, will remain the European tradition. The United States is, after all, a product of the European Enlightenment. However, you do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others. Works from other cultural traditions need to be studied as well. #Philosophers and Philosophy#Philosophers and Philosophy

“ John Searle:The Intentionality of the mind not only creates the possibility of meaning, but limits its forms. #Problems#Problems

“ John Searle:Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence. #Work#Work

“ John Searle: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. #Space#Space

“ John Searle:One can imagine a computer simulation of the action of peptides in the hypothalamus that is accurate down to the last synapse. But equally one can imagine a computer simulation of the oxidation of hydrocarbons in a car engine or the action of digestive processes in a stomach when it is digesting pizza. And the simulation is no more the real thing in the case of the brain than it is in the case of the car or the stomach. Barring miracles, you could not run your car by doing a computer simulation of the oxidation of gasoline, and you could not digest pizza by running the program that simulates such digestion. It seems obvious that a simulation of cognition will similarly not produce the effects of the neurobiology of cognition. #Food and Eating#Food and Eating

“ John Searle: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. #Faces#Faces

“ John Searle:You need to know enough of the natural sciences so that you are not a stranger in the world. #Science and Scientists#Science and Scientists

“ John Searle: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. #Speakers and Speaking#Speakers and Speaking

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