Mind, Language, and Society : Philosophy in the Real World (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: external realism, derived intentionality, illocutionary point, United States, Santa Claus (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

John Searle's summation of earlier writings is not just an essential tie-up volume for existing readers; it is also a perfect introduction to the work of one of the clearest heads in the philosophy of mind. Searle's book is a riposte to all those academics who make a career out of contradicting and complicating such default positions as the existence of an external reality, the reality of personal consciousness, and the reasonable fit of language to the perceived world. Certainly, we should examine these positions! But the first duty of philosophy, Searle argues, is that it should attempt to accommodate what is known. As far as we can tell, for example, consciousness is a biological product, but there is a long-running contention between the materialists--whose reductive descriptions of consciousness arrive, finally, at an embarrassed denial that consciousness exists at all--and the dualists, who cannot describe consciousness without evoking some supernatural involvement. Neither position is tenable--each offers some corrective to the other. The good explanation is in there somewhere, but the sheer intractability of the debate won't let it be expressed. In situations like this, Searle argues, it is always the terms that are wrong. Terms, mind you, that in this case include "matter," "mind," "physical," and "mental"! Searle--married as he is to common sense--is of necessity one of our most iconoclastic and creative thinkers. --Simon Ings, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

For years, Searle (Intentionality; The Mystery of Consciousness; Minds, Brains, and Science), a professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, has battled against philosophical fashion to insist that the world is, in fact, intelligible to the human mind. This may sound unremarkable to laypeople. But, as Searle remarks, at a time when postmodernism and deconstruction are in vogue, intellectuals, to be taken seriously, often must believe that different cultures have different rationalities and that the world as a whole is unintelligible. Searle, however, defends the naturalistic belief that there does exist a real world, which is perceivable and comprehensible and is not changed by the angle of our observation. Among his most forceful arguments are that consciousness is a genuine phenomenon caused by knowable physical processes; that intention is real, produced by causal mechanisms in the brain; and that language expands the possibilities of intentionality. In an interesting aside, Searle speculates that contemporary thinkers reject an objectivist theory because of "an urge to power." They don't want to be answerable to the world but for the world to be answerable to them. To Searle, however, realism "is not a theory at all but the framework within which it is possible to have theories."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465045219
• ISBN-13: 978-0465045211
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #455,482 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunningly Elegant and Persausive, June 13, 2000

By	D. S. Heersink "D. Stephen Heersink" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

About fifteen years ago, Mortimer Adler wrote a slim volume, "Ten Philosophical Mistakes," which received little attention. Adler was deemed not a professional philosopher and was thus summarily dismissed. Moreover, he argued cogently for a return to what in philosophical parlance is know as "naive realism," but all the chic thinkers then, and now, debunk such a world view as archaic and not very interesting. It didn't help, perhaps, that Adler repeatedly appealed to Aristotle and Aquinas to justify his positions - whether these sages have something to contribute or not.

Now comes John Searle, a very professional philosopher and a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He's written a great many books, some of which have been standards in the field of language and psychology throughout the world. He's Oxford trained and is widely respected. And, like Adler, he has a few philosophical mistakes he'd like to clear up. And does so incisively against those who attack the external world, mind, consciousness, intentionality, society, and language with clarity, elegance, style, and wit. Unlike Adler, he applies the Anglo-American style of analytic philosophy, the most rigorous intellectual approach, but one doesn't need to know logic to understand the force of his compelling arguments.

In many ways, this is Searle's best book. Not because it is a detailed examination of every philosophical nuance, but because he brutally demythologizes idealism and all attending -isms that have no foundation, no raison d'etre, no excuse, other than the "will to power" to force _their_ reality onto others. In 161 short pages he turns many philosophical "puzzles" into enigmas of someone else's making, not perplexities we have to live with. It's a refreshing and enjoyable read. I only hope time will bear the fruit of Searle's views on ethics, one field in which he has been curiously silent.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant overview and summary of Searle's thought, January 8, 1999

By	John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Silver Lake, OH) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Mind, Language, And Society: Philosophy In The Real World (Masterminds) (Hardcover)

In this somewhat informal presentation, philosopher John R. Searle condenses a lifetime-to-date of thought on various issues surrounding the so-called "mind-body" problem.

The solution to this problem, he contends, is to regard mind as a natural phenomenon that depends causally on the brain but also has causal powers of its own (much like such macro-properties of matter as "solidity" and "color"). In this way, he argues, we can do justice to the empirical facts without falling into either of the twin errors "dualism" and "materialism," both of which he ascribes to an inherited philosophical language that is frankly better dispensed with.

He summarizes his views on consciousness and "intentionality," quickly but precisely describing the essential features of mental activity that set it apart from other natural phenomena.

On this foundation, he builds his theories of speech acts and socially-constructed reality, never losing sight of the fact that each of these depends on a "background" of what he calls "external realism" (the view that there is a given reality that exists independently of our minds, which he correctly notes is not really a "view" but the implicit basis on which _all_ "views" are held).

And there are other delights along the way: for example, we are also treated, in summary fashion, to Searle's engagingly straightforward defense of the aforementioned "external realism" (presented more fully in the three closing chapters of his previous work, _The Construction of Social Reality_).

All in all, this highly readable, entertaining, and thought-provoking volume by an eminent modern philosopher succeeds in its aim of restoring, and even somewhat advancing, the ideals of the Enlightenment against a modern/postmodern onslaught of obfuscatory antirealism. It should lead satisfied readers to investigate the rest of his works, to which this volume is a valuable introduction and which they will find equally brilliant: Searle does philosophy as it ought to be done.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Realism Wins!, February 9, 2000

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This book is an excellent summation of Searle's thought. The first section is an attack on antirealist (i.e., there are no facts in the world independent of facts we construct with thoughts and language) strains in contemporary intellectual circles that is right on the money. The next section reiterates Searle's position that consciousness is a biological phenomenon and the product of the brain. While I think that Searle avoids ontological issues, his main aim is to do away with the Cartesian (i.e., the mind is a distinct substance from matter) framework that haunts the mind-body debate.

Finally, Searle presents his thoughts on how social and institutional facts (like "money", "points in a ballgame", "marriage", etc.) enter into the world. The conclusion of the book talks about what the role of philosophy is and how philosophy makes progress. That is, Searle explains the importance of philosophy.