John Searle
Consciousness is a real and irreducible fact of inner life; to deny it is to overlook what is in front of us.
Life
John Searle (1932-2025), an American philosopher born in Denver, taught at the University of California, Berkeley. He renewed the philosophy of language with speech act theory, then the philosophy of mind with the Chinese room argument (1980), against the idea that a program is enough to think. He defends 'biological naturalism': consciousness is caused by the brain and is nonetheless real.
Main works
Analyses speaking as rule-governed action: promising, commanding, asserting.
With the Chinese room, argues that manipulating symbols is not enough for understanding.
Defends the reality and irreducibility of consciousness against materialism and dualism.
Explains how money, governments and marriages exist through collective agreement.
In his own words
« Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed. »
« Dualism makes the problem insoluble; materialism denies the existence of any phenomenon to study, and hence of any problem. »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceHe defends external realism and truth as correspondence with facts, against skeptical and relativist views.
Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (1995)
Biological naturalism: consciousness is caused by brain processes and is a real, irreducible first-person feature of the brain, neither a separate substance nor mere computation.
Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992)
He thinks the 'gap' between reasons and action is a real experience that may reflect an undetermined brain, so free will is not an illusion to be dismissed.
Searle, Rationality in Action (2001); Freedom and Neurobiology (2007)