John Searle's Speech Acts (1969) and Expression and Meaning (1979) developed a highly original and influential approach to the study of language. But behind both works lay the assumption that the philosophy of language is in the end a branch of the philosophy of the mind: speech acts are forms of human action and represent just one example of the mind's capacity to relate the human organism to the world. The present book is concerned with these biologically fundamental capacities, (...) and, though third in the sequence, in effect it provides the philosophical foundations for the other two. Intentionality is taken to be the crucial mental phenomenon, and its analysis involves wide-ranging discussions of perception, action, causation, meaning, and reference. In all these areas John Searle has original and stimulating views. He ends with a resolution of the 'mind-body' problem. (shrink)

The title of The Rediscovery of the Mind suggests the question "When was the mind lost?" Since most people may not be aware that it ever was lost, we must also then ask "Who lost it?" It was lost, of course, only by philosophers, by certain philosophers. This passed unnoticed by society at large. The "rediscovery" is also likely to pass unnoticed. But has the mind been rediscovered by the same philosophers who "lost" it? Probably not. John Searle is (...) an analytic philosopher, with some of the same notions as the positivists and behaviorists who rejected consciousness and "lost" the mind in the first place, but he also does not sound like the kind of reductionist who would have joined that crowd. His views, indeed, are sensible enough, and some of his insights so important, that it is a shame to find his thought profoundly limited by some of the same mistakes and prejudices that ruined philosophy, and not just philosophy of mind, under the influence of those positivists and behaviorists. There is enough of genuine value in his treatment, that it can easily be taken up and, with relatively slight modification, added to what is of permanent value in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

In Mind: An Introduction, for the first time John Searle offers a general introduction to the philosophy of the mind. Giving a broad survey of all the major issues under discussion in the field, including philosophical issues in cognitive science and neurobiology, Searle argues for his own distinctive point of view. He leads the reader through the variety of theories that reduce the mind to aspects that can be fully explained by physics, and then concludes with his own view (...) that such reductionist theories ignore or cannot adequately explain the most fundamental aspect of the mind - subjective consciousness. (shrink)

One of the most important and influential philosophers of the last 30 years, John Searle has been concerned throughout his career with a single overarching question: how can we have a unified and theoretically satisfactory account of ourselves and of our relations to other people and to the natural world? In other words, how can we reconcile our common-sense conception of ourselves as conscious, free, mindful, rational agents in a world that we believe comprises brute, unconscious, mindless, meaningless, mute (...) physical particles in fields of force? The essays in this collection are all related to the broad overarching issue that unites the diverse strands of Searle's work. Gathering in an accessible manner essays available only in relatively obscure books and journals, this collection will be of particular value to professionals and upper-level students in philosophy as well as to Searle's more extended audience in such fields as psychology and linguistics. (shrink)

After John Dewey, Addison W. Moore was recognized as the chief spokesman for the instrumentalist version of pragmatism. Never before available, this complete collection of Moore's work contains dozens of philosophical articles, essays, book reviews, writings by other philosophers, and reviews of his work, together with his book, Pragmatism and its Critics (1910).

Raciolinguistics reveals the central role that language plays in shaping our ideas about race and vice versa. The book brings together a team of leading scholars-working both within and beyond the United States-to share powerful, much-needed research that helps us understand the increasingly vexed relationships between race, ethnicity, and language in our rapidly changing world. Combining the innovative, cutting-edge approaches of race and ethnic studies with fine-grained linguistic analyses, authors cover a wide range of topics including the struggle over the (...) very term "African American," the racialized language education debates within the increasing number of "majority-minority" immigrant communities in the U.S., the dangers of multicultural education in a Europe that is struggling to meet the needs of new migrants, and the sociopolitical and cultural meanings of linguistic styles used in Brazilian favelas, South African townships, Mexican and Puerto Rican barrios in Chicago, and Korean American "cram schools" in New York City, among other sites. Taking into account rapidly changing demographics in the U.S and shifting cultural and media trends across the globe--from Hip Hop cultures, to transnational Mexican popular and street cultures, to Israeli reality TV, to new immigration trends across Africa and Europe--Raciolinguistics shapes the future of scholarship on race, ethnicity, and language. By taking a comparative look across a diverse range of language and literacy contexts, the volume seeks not only to set the research agenda in this burgeoning area of study, but also to help resolve pressing educational and political problems in some of the most contested raciolinguistic contexts in the world. (shrink)

Commentary on John Searle's Article John Searle presents a philosopher's view of how conscious experience and free action relate to brain function. That view demands an examination by a neuroscientist who has experimentally investigated this issue.

Cognitive architectures are theories of cognition that try to capture the essential representations and mechanisms that underlie cognition. Research in cognitive architectures has gradually moved from a focus on the functional capabilities of architectures to the ability to model the details of human behavior, and, more recently, brain activity. Although there are many different architectures, they share many identical or similar mechanisms, permitting possible future convergence. In judging the quality of a particular cognitive model, it is pertinent to not just (...) judge its fit to the experimental data but also its simplicity and ability to make predictions. (shrink)

This book, the first of its kind, surveys the career of the renowned Australian-German theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky. Its nine chapters provide multidisciplinary analyses of Barrie Kosky’s working practices and stage productions, from the beginning of his career in Melbourne to his current roles as Head of the Komische Oper Berlin and as a guest director in international demand. Specialists in theatre studies, opera studies, musical theatre studies, aesthetics, and arts administration offer in-depth accounts of Kosky’s unusually wide-ranging (...) engagements with the performing arts – as a director of spoken theatre, operas, musicals, operettas, as an adaptor, a performer, a writer, and an arts manager. Further, this book includes contributions from theatre practitioners with first-hand experience of collaborating with Kosky in the 1990s, who draw on interviews with members of Gilgul, Australia’s first Jewish theatre company, to document this formative period in Kosky’s career. The book investigates the ways in which Kosky has created transnational theatres, through introducing European themes and theatre techniques to his Australian work or through bringing fresh voices to the national dialogue in Germany’s theatre landscape. An appendix contains a timeline and guide to Kosky’s productions to date. (shrink)

Ethical Considerations at the Intersection of Psychiatry and Religion aims to give mental health professionals a conceptual framework for understanding the role of R/S in ethical decision-making and serve as practical guidance for approaching challenging cases. Part I addresses general considerations, including the basis of therapeutic values in a pluralistic context, the nature of theological and psychiatric ethics, spiritual issues arising in diagnosis and treatment, unhealthy and harmful uses of religion, and practical implications of personal spirituality. Part II examines how (...) these considerations apply in specific contexts: inpatient and outpatient, consultation-liaison, child and adolescent, geriatric, disability, forensic, community, international, addiction and disaster and emergency psychiatry, as well as in the work of religious professionals, ethics committees, psychiatric education, and research. Thick descriptions of case examples analyzed using the framework of Jonson and Winslow show the clinical relevance of understanding the contributions of religion and spirituality to patient preferences, quality of life, decision making, and effective treatment. (shrink)

Comments on:Charles T. Mathewes, Agency, Nature, Transcendence, and Moralism: A Review of Recent Work in Moral Psychology.

My work in the philosophy of mind developed out of my early work in the philosophy of language, especially the theory of speech acts, Most of my work in the philosophy of mind has been concerned with the topics of intent ion ality and its structure, particularly the intentionality of perception and action and the relation of the intentionality of the mind to the intentionality of language. I have also written extensively on cognitive science (see cognitive psychology), especially on the (...) limitations Of the COMPUTATIONAL MODEL of the mind. Other work has concerned the mind‐body problem, the nature and structure of consciousness, the relation of consciousness to unconsciousness, the proper form of explanation in the social sciences and in the explanation of human behaviour generally, and the background of intentionality. I can only discuss a small number of these topics in this article, so I will confine myself to four of the most controversial areas. (shrink)

The present article presents Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619-1692 C.E.)’s reading of the eighteenth chapter of the Zhuang-Zi 莊子 (ZZ) by looking at his entry from Zhuang-Zi-Tong 莊子通 and other key glosses from Zhuang-Zi-Jie 莊子解. The philosophical upshot, I aim to show, is that Wang takes ZZ as presenting the consummation of “the greatest joyousness” (zhi-le 至樂) as requiring getting rid of joyousness as one’s desideratum. Using Derek Parfit’s work as a point of reference, I aim to show that this is (...) not paradoxical or even inconsistent or even (directly or indirectly) self-defeating but is instead an interesting instance of a self-effacing theory. (shrink)

The study of rationality and practical reason, or rationality in action, has been central to Western intellectual culture. In this invigorating book, John Searle lays out six claims of what he calls the Classical Model of rationality and shows why they are false. He then presents an alternative theory of the role of rationality in thought and action. A central point of Searle's theory is that only irrational actions are directly caused by beliefs and desires—for example, the actions of (...) a person in the grip of an obsession or addiction. In most cases of rational action, there is a gap between the motivating desire and the actual decision making. The traditional name for this gap is "freedom of the will." According to Searle, all rational activity presupposes free will. For rationality is possible only where one has a choice among various rational as well as irrational options. Unlike many philosophical tracts, Rationality in Action invites the reader to apply the author's ideas to everyday life. Searle shows, for example, that contrary to the traditional philosophical view, weakness of will is very common. He also points out the absurdity of the claim that rational decision making always starts from a consistent set of desires. Rational decision making, he argues, is often about choosing between conflicting reasons for action. In fact, humans are distinguished by their ability to be rationally motivated by desire-independent reasons for action. Extending his theory of rationality to the self, Searle shows how rational deliberation presupposes an irreducible notion of the self. He also reveals the idea of free will to be essentially a thesis of how the brain works. (shrink)

Int. intr nseca i derivada. Condicions de satisfacci . Atribuci literal i metaf rica d'Int. Int. intr nseca-cervell. Ment-cervell. Panorama Filosof a de la Ment. Ryle. Causaci intencional. Teleolog a. Explicaci de les CC. Socials.

As Louisiana and Cuba emerged from slavery in the late nineteenth century, each faced the question of what rights former slaves could claim. Degrees of Freedom compares and contrasts these two societies in which slavery was destroyed by war, and citizenship was redefined through social and political upheaval. Both Louisiana and Cuba were rich in sugar plantations that depended on an enslaved labor force. After abolition, on both sides of the Gulf of Mexico, ordinary people-cane cutters and cigar workers, laundresses (...) and labor organizers-forged alliances to protect and expand the freedoms they had won. But by the beginning of the twentieth century, Louisiana and Cuba diverged sharply in the meanings attributed to race and color in public life, and in the boundaries placed on citizenship. Louisiana had taken the path of disenfranchisement and state-mandated racial segregation; Cuba had enacted universal manhood suffrage and had seen the emergence of a transracial conception of the nation. What might explain these differences? Moving through the cane fields, small farms, and cities of Louisiana and Cuba, Rebecca Scott skillfully observes the people, places, legislation, and leadership that shaped how these societies adjusted to the abolition of slavery. The two distinctive worlds also come together, as Cuban exiles take refuge in New Orleans in the 1880s, and black soldiers from Louisiana garrison small towns in eastern Cuba during the 1899 U.S. military occupation. Crafting her narrative from the words and deeds of the actors themselves, Scott brings to life the historical drama of race and citizenship in postemancipation societies. (shrink)

John Dewey’s pragmatism and naturalism are grounded on metaphysical tenets describing how mind’s intelligence is thoroughly natural in its activity and productivity. His worldview is best classified as Organic Realism, since it descended from the German organicism and Naturphilosophie of Herder, Schelling, and Hegel which shaped the major influences on his early thought. Never departing from its tenets, his later philosophy starting with Experience and Nature elaborated a philosophical organon about science, culture, and ethics to fulfill his particular version (...) of Organic Realism. (shrink)

Christian miller invites further clarification about the relationship between accountability and autonomy. Whereas embracing accountability to others for one’s responsibilities in those relationships emphasizes relationality, autonomy accents the individual’s own capacities to exhibit agency in enacting one’s decisions. Accordingly, we theorize that relational capacities for empathic concern and perspective-taking are especially important in the virtue of accountability. The capacity for self-regulation may serve both one’s autonomous pursuits and accountability for carrying out one’s responsibilities...

Atheology is the intellectual effort to understand atheism, defend the reasonableness of unbelief, and support nonbelievers in their encounters with religion. This book presents a historical overview of the development of atheology from ancient thought to the present day. It offers in-depth examinations of four distinctive schools of atheological thought: rationalist atheology, scientific atheology, moral atheology, and civic atheology. John R. Shook shows how a familiarity with atheology's complex histories, forms, and strategies illuminates the contentious features of today's atheist (...) and secularist movements, which are just as capable of contesting each other as opposing religion. The result is a book that provides a disciplined and philosophically rigorous examination of atheism's intellectual strategies for reasoning with theology. Systematic Atheology is an important contribution to the philosophy of religion, religious studies, secular studies, and the sociology and psychology of nonreligion. (shrink)

By John R. Searle Copyright John R. Searle I. Naturalizing Language I believe that the greatest achievements in philosophy over the past hundred or one hundred and twenty five years have been in the philosophy of language. Beginning with Frege, who invented the subject, and continuing through Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Austin and their successors, right to the present day, there is no branch of philosophy with so much high quality work as the philosophy of language. In my view, (...) the only achievement comparable to those of the great philosophers of language is Rawls’s reinvention of the subject of political philosophy (and therefore implicitly the subject of ethics). But with this one possible exception, I think that work in the philosophy of language is at the top of our achievements. Having said that, however, I have to record a serious misgiving I have about the subject. The problem is that its practitioners in general do not treat language as a natural phenomenon. This may seem a strange charge to make, given that so many contemporary and recent philosophers of language are anxious to emphasize the empirical character of their theories of language. Quine and Davidson are striking examples of resolute empiricism. My objection is that few contemporary and recent philosophers of language attempt to treat language as a natural extension of non-linguistic biological capacities. Language is not seen as continuous with, nor as an extension of, the rest of our specifically human biological inheritance. I think there is a deep reason, both historically and intellectually, why language has not been treated naturalistically. It is.. (shrink)

The dispute between the empiricist and interpretivist conceptions of the social sciences is properly conceived not as a matter of reduction or covering laws. Features specific to the social sciences include the following. Explanations of human behavior make reference to intentional causation; social phenomena are permeated with mental components and are self-referential; social science explanations have not been as successful as those in natural science because of their concern with intentional causation, because their explanations must be identical with the propositional (...) content of the mind of the actor, and because a social phenomenon exists only if people believe it exists. Elements of an apparatus necessary to analyze this problematic social ontology are given and include selfreferentiality, constitutive rules, collective intentionality, linguistic permeation of the facts, systematic interrelationships among social facts, and primacy of acts over objects. (shrink)

In The Securitarian Personality, John R. Hibbing draws a detailed portrait of the psychological makeup of Donald Trump's most ardent supporters. They are motivated not by fear and not by a desire for authority and conformity, but rather by a desire to keep themselves, their families, and their country's core cultural group secure and safe from outsiders-defined broadly as anyone not contributing to the strength of societal insiders. Hibbing concludes by considering the likely role of Trump supporters in American (...) politics when there is no Trump. (shrink)

John R. Schneider explores the problem that animal suffering, caused by the inherent nature of Darwinian evolution, poses to belief in theism. Examining the aesthetic aspects of this moral problem, Schneider focuses on the three prevailing approaches to it: that the Fall caused animal suffering in nature (Lapsarian Theodicy), that Darwinian evolution was the only way for God to create an acceptably good and valuable world (Only-Way Theodicy), and that evolution is the source of major, God-justifying beauty (Aesthetic Theodicy). (...) He also uses canonical texts and doctrines from Judaism and Christianity - notably the book of Job, and the doctrines of the incarnation, atonement, and resurrection - to build on insights taken from the non-lapsarian alternative approaches. Schneider thus constructs an original, God-justifying account of God and the evolutionary suffering of animals. His book enables readers to see that the Darwinian configuration of animal suffering unveiled by scientists is not as implausible on Christian theism as commonly supposed. (shrink)

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965.

The neurosciences have advanced to the point that we can now treat consciousness as a scientific problem like any other. The problem is to explain how brain processes cause consciousness and how consciousness is realized in the brain. Progress is impeded by a number of philosophical mistakes, and the aim of this paper is to remove nine of those mistakes: (i) consciousness cannot be defined; (ii) consciousness is subjective but science is objective; (iii) brain processes cannot explain consciousness; (iv) the (...) problem of ‘qualia’ should be set aside; (v) consciousness is epiphenomenal; (vi) consciousness has no evolutionary function; (vii) a causal account of consciousness is necessarily dualistic; (viii) science is reductionistic, so a scientific account of consciousness would show it reducible to something else; and (ix) an account of consciousness must be an information processing account. (shrink)