John Searle and his contribution to the philosophy of mind

Miscellaneous General
1

For those of you who don’t know the man, John Searle is professor at the univerity of California, Berkeley active in the field of philosophy of mind and language.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Searle

I haven’t found a thread on mises.org discussing his work which is a real shame because this man really deserves some attention from libertarians. I don’t know if John Searle himself would call himself a libertarian, thats besides the point though, what matters is that his philosophy of the mind sure works great from a libertarian perspective (objevtivists too should love this guy).

I’m starting this thread mainly because I want to recommend his lectures on the subject of philosophy of mind. The lectures are from The Teaching Company, now I tried finding the link to these lectures from there site but I couldn’t find it. You can download them from a torrent site though.

Lecture 1: Dualism— Descartes’ Legacy

Lecture 2: Alternatives to Dualism—Materialism and Its Contents

Lecture 3: Strong Artificial Intelligence

Lecture 4: The Chinese- Room Argument and Its Critics

Lecture 5: Can a Machine Think?

Lecture 6: Is the Brain a Digital Computer?

Lecture 7: Some Solutions to Descartes’ Problems

Lecture 8: The Structure of Consciousness

Lecture 9: How to Study Consciousness Scientifically

Lecture 10: How the Mind Works—An Introduction to Intentionality

Lecture 11: The Structure of Action and Perception

Lecture 12: The Construction of Social Reality

I would also recomend his book "Mind: A Brief Introduction

2

Maybe I’m dense, but I don’t see why libertarianism would imply, be implied by, or anything along those lines, any particular theory of mind. I do enjoy studying Searle, even if I can’t agree with all of his points, but I wish you would explain why he is particularly interesting for a libertarian. I’m not being sarcastic, I’d really like to know.

If libertarians do need a theory of mind, it seems to me that the first place we’d look would be Szasz, wouldn’t it?

3

The philosophy of the mind is obviously important for any political or economical approach to life because of questions concerning epistemology and ontology. He believes that consciousness is a real force in the world (as opposed to lets say marxism and historie materalism) and he dislikes Decarte. Searle’s “biological naturalism” places him squarely in the camp of non-materialist, non-dualist philosophers who view mental phenomena as real and as having specifically mental properties as well as a broader biological nature. In this general respect, his views on mind are clearly in the same ballpark with the “mentalist monism” of Roger W. Sperry, as well as Objectivism.

I suggest you read this interview from reason magazine with John Searle, he explains why he dislikes postmodernism and relativism, why he admires the enlightment and so forth. http://www.reason.com/news/show/27599.html

JAIanKatz, surely you must see why questions like:“What is the nature of the human mind?” “What is the relation of the social sciences and the natural sciences?” “Do we have freedom of the will?” “Is man a digital computer”? Are relevant to how society SHOULD be.

4

Very interesting! I have read some things from neurophilosophy and have seen his name mentioned more than once but have never read up on him. I think I will after reading your post.

5

I’m glad to hear that! If you do, and feel like discussing his works, then please find this thread again. Iv’e been wanting too discuss his works with fellow libertarians for some time now.

6

Clearly, it’s been a few years since this thread started and not much has been continued on Searle. I recently discovered him, and started to read and listen to his thoughts about the mind-reality connnection. I think it’s fundamentally important to understand because it helps elaborate and justify Praxeology.

Watch this video of Searle discussing his book “Speech Acts” and notice that he shows the signs of understanding the praxeological nature of action. He fails in realizing that the concepts that he is applying have both already been elaborated (by the Philosopher King Mises) and are sadly limited in their scope. He fails to analyze action as a whole, and merely keeps action limited to his subject of speech.

Hoppe only elucidates Mises’ brilliance further! I love this stuff! Someone needs to give a copy of Human Action to Searle.