John Searle quotes

John Searle is an American philosopher best known for his contributions to the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. His work on speech acts and consciousness has had a profound impact on modern philosophical thought. He is especially recognized for the famous "Chinese Room" argument, challenging views on artificial intelligence. Here are 40 of his quotes:

Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence. (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. View quote
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. View quote
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." View quote
John Searle
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. View quote
John Searle
My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business. View quote
John Searle
Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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)
In the performance of an illocutionary act in the literal utterance of a sentence, the speaker intends to produce a certain effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect; and furthermore, if he is using the words literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the rules for using the expressions he utters associate the expression with the production of that effect. View quote
John Searle
Dualism makes the problem insoluble; materialism denies the existence of any phenomenon to study, and hence of any problem. View quote
John Searle
Materialism ends up denying the existence of any irreducible subjective qualitative states of sentience or awareness. View quote
John Searle
The Intentionality of the mind not only creates the possibility of meaning, but limits its forms. View quote
John Searle
The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else. View quote
John Searle
The assertion fallacy ... is the fallacy of confusing the conditions for the performance of the speech act of assertion with the analysis of the meaning of particular words occurring in certain assertions. View quote
John Searle
The general nature of the speech act fallacy can be stated as follows, using "good” as our example. Calling something good is characteristically praising or commending or recommending it, etc. But it is a fallacy to infer from this that the meaning of "good” is explained by saying it is used to perform the act of commendation. View quote
John Searle
It seems to me obvious that infants and many animals that do not in any ordinary sense have a language or perform speech acts nonetheless have Intentional states. Only someone in the grip of a philosophical theory would deny that small babies can literally be said to want milk and that dogs want to be let out or believe that their master is at the door. View quote
John Searle
Well, what does "good” mean anyway...? As Wittgenstein suggested, "good,” like "game,” has a family of meanings. Prominent among them is this one: "meets the criteria or standards of assessment or evaluation.”. View quote
John Searle
The ascription of an unconscious intentional phenomenon to a system implies that the phenomenon is in principle accessible to consciousness. (John Searle)
Descartes may have made a lot of mistakes, but he was right about this: you cannot doubt the existence of your own consciousness. That's the first feature of consciousness, it's real and irreducible. You cannot get rid of it by showing that it's an illusion in a way that you can with other standard illusions. View quote
John Searle
In general, I feel if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself. View quote
John Searle
Precisely by inculcating a critical attitude, the "canon" served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. Ironically, the same tradition is now regarded as oppressive. The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked. View quote
John Searle
All of our conscious states, without exception, are caused by lower level neurobiological processes in the brain, and they are realized in the brain as higher level, or system features. It's about as mysterious as the liquidity of water, right? The liquidity is not an extra juice squirted out by the H2O molecules, it's a condition that the system is in; and just as the jar full of water can go from a liquid to solid, depending on the behavior of the molecules, so your brain can go from a state of being conscious to a state of being unconscious, depending on the behavior of the molecules. The famous mind body problem is that simple. View quote
John Searle