List of John Searle Quotes

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.

In Many Cases It Is A Matter For Decision And Not A Simple Matter Of Fact Whether X Understands Y; And So On.

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.

The Ascription Of An Unconscious Intentional Phenomenon To A System Implies That The Phenomenon Is In Principle Accessible To Consciousness.

My Car And My Adding Machine Understand Nothing: They Are Not In That Line Of Business

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

How Do We Get From Electrons To Elections And From Protons To Presidents?