John Searle Quotes

A collection of quotes by John Searle.

John Searle is an American philosopher and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. Born in 1932, he is best known for his contributions to the philosophy of mind, semantics, and the nature of consciousness. Searle's famous thought experiment, the Chinese Room Argument, challenges the idea of strong artificial intelligence. Throughout his career, he has published numerous influential works, including "Speech Acts" and "Minds, Brains and Science." Searle has been recognized with various prestigious awards, including the National Humanities Medal.

It seemed to a number of philosophers of language, myself in

It seemed to a number of philosophers of language, myself included, that we should attempt to achieve a unification of Chomsky's syntax, with the results of the researches that were going on in semantics and pragmatics. I believe that this effort has proven to be a failure. Though Chomsky did indeed revolutionize the subject of linguistics, it is not at all clear, at the end the century, what the solid results of this revolution are. As far as I can tell there is not a single rule of syntax that all, or even most, competent linguists are prepared to agree is a rule.

Science Language Philosophy Linguistics

You need to know enough of the natural sciences so that you

You need to know enough of the natural sciences so that you are not a stranger in the world.

I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed comput

I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing.

My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are no

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

We often attribute 'understanding' and other cognitive predi

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.