John Searle, American philosopher, profoundly reshaped how we understand language, mind, and society. His pioneering work on the philosophy of language—exploring the nature of speech acts—and his influential insights into consciousness and intentionality have impacted generations of thinkers across cognitive science, linguistics, and AI ethics. Searle’s clarity of thought and rigorous argumentation demonstrate how passionate pursuit of big questions can illuminate the very essence of human experience and shape meaningful progress across disciplines.
"Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed."
"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."
"In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on."
"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.""
"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."
"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."