John Searle Quotes

• Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself.

  John Searle

• Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

  John Searle

• Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.

  John Searle

• 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.

  John Searle

• 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.

  John Searle

• My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business.

  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.

  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.

  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.”

  John Searle

• Berkeley had a liberal element in the student body who tended to be quite active. I think that’s in general a feature of intellectually active places.

  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.

  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.

  John Searle

  Tags in Car

John Searle (12)

Birth:	31st July, 1932
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Philosopher, Professor

About

John Rogers Searle was born in Denver, Colorado, USA. He is an American philosopher. Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He earned all his university degrees, BA, MA, and PhD, from the University of Oxford, where he held his first faculty positions. He is currently Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Language and Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written several books include: Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, The Campus War, Expression and Meaning, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, The Rediscovery of the Mind, The Construction of Social Reality, The Mystery of Consciousness, Mind, Language And Society, Rationality in Action, Consciousness and Language, Mind: A Brief Introduction, Philosophy in a New Century, Making the Social World, and Seeing Things as They Are. In 2000, he received the Jean Nicod Prize; in 2004, the National Humanities Medal; and in 2006, the Mind & Brain Prize.

Related Authors

• Moses Mendelssohn
• Étienne Gilson
• Robert C. Solomon
• Steven Colborne
• Ernest Gellner
• Louis Althusser
• Jan Smuts
• Moses Hess
• Julia Kristeva
• Howard Thurman

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 21st November

Births

• 1870 - Mary Johnston
• 1870 - Alexander Berkman
• 1958 - Rickson Gracie
• 1962 - Steven Curtis Chapman
• 1912 - Eleanor Powell

Deaths

• 1958 - Mel Ott
• 1959 - Max Baer
• 1926 - Joseph McKenna
• 2000 - Sir Cyril Astley Clarke
• 1945 - Robert Benchley