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Mind: A Brief Introduction
"The philosophy of mind is unique among contemporary philosophical subjects," writes John Searle, "in that all of the most famous and influential theories are false." One of the world's most eminent thinkers, Searle dismantles these theories as he presents a vividly written, comprehensive introduction to the mind. He begins with a look at the twelve problems of philosophy of mind--which he calls "Descartes and Other Disasters"--problems which he returns to throughout the volume, as he illuminates such topics as materialism, consciousness, the mind-body problem, intentionality, mental causation, free will, and the self. The book offers a refreshingly direct and engaging introduction to one of the most intriguing areas of philosophy.
224 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2004
About the author
John Rogers Searle
70 books331 followersJohn Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932 in Denver, Colorado) is an American philosopher and was the Slusser Professor of Philosophy and Mills Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and social philosophy, he was the first tenured professor to join the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. He received the Jean Nicod Prize in 2000, and the National Humanities Medal in 2004.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
November 6, 2009
The question of the mind is a convoluted mess. Until recently I'd not given too much thought to the whole mind/body question, it's one of those questions that continental philosophy just doesn't give too much attention to. There are intersubjective questions like The Other, and that gets played out quite a bit, but to get into the real logical / science of it all is just something left to those unsexy analytical eggheads.
The ridiculousness of the question is that it's based on a bunch of assumptions that have been fought over to logical death for the past few hundred years, and no one outside of philosophers really give a shit about the question. Just take the perception part of the mind problem, there are a great many philosophers, really smart men (I don't know of any women who said these things), who believe we don't see the world, but only some sense of the world, that may or may not be an accurate representation of the world, that may or may not even be there, but could be, or could just be an idea in our minds, based on the fact that when we look at a coin at different angles the shape can change from being a circle to being elliptical, and that a table can look differently depending on if you are on one side, or crouch down at eye-level with it, or standing above it. Because these things look different it means that we don't see the thing it-self, but only some kind of impression of it, that is only our perception and not the thing-it-self (roughly). A five year old has the cognitive ability to realize that changing ones point of view makes something look different but doesn't change the thing, and that it is impossible to see anything from all sides and perspectives at once.
When you read grown men arguing about this stuff, and proving that this means something, one wonders why half of the philosophical world just threw their hands up, called an end to philosophy and went literary with no regard for the logic that can make otherwise intelligent people seriously believe things like this.
One can blame Descartes for all of this, and then Hume who brought a certain logical paradox between a person and their relationship to the world that got taken as being a true psychological or mental state instead of being a problem (even though Hume probably thought he was right and was describing the mind as it was, or maybe not, I don't know).
Searle's book is an attempt to clear out all of the bullshit that the questions of the mind have resulted in to, and give his own interpretation of the problem and it's solution. He does a nice job of clearing away the rubble of centuries of misguided formulations of the problems, and shoots lots of holes in contemporary attempts to solve the nature of the mind problem, but I have no idea if his solution is any better. This isn't the kind of book where he goes into enough detail for me to know that.
Instead of the title the book has, it should be called, Mind: A Brief Introduction to John Searle's Take on the Mind, not that this is a problem, it's just not shall I say an unbiased look at the mind problem.
From my own opinions and knowledge, I think that Searle might be partly right about the mind problem, but I think that there is something missing in his view, and maybe in his other works he gives a clearer explanation, or a more detailed description of what he actually thinks.
I, of course, have my own unfounded opinion about the solution to problems brought up in this book, but I have no proof, and I'm sure other people have thought of my ideas first, and I'm just going to keep it to myself for now, because it's much more fun playing with the logic in my head and trying to figure out how to put it into words at this point.
One thing that I think is missing in this book is any real focus on memory. It's brought up from time to time, but a few of the topics could have been expanded further by going into what Searle thinks memory is. The only time he really uses memory is in the chapter about the self, where I found it problematic. Is memory really a necessary condition to our knowledge of our self? Don't other people have a say in our conception of believing ourselves to be a self? I'm thinking of an extreme example, but recently I saw a documentary about a guy who just suddenly lost all memory of who he was, and he filmed himself on his quest to find out who he was. Is this man a new person? A different self? What about the people who knew him before, do they see him as the same person? There are problems that arise in this documentary that don't seem adequately covered in criteria of 'self-hood' that Searle plays with.
A second problem was in his distinction of conscious and unconscious states. He dismisses the unconscious, which could be ok, but puts certain things that one would say are unconscious in a non-conscious part of the mind, such as breathing and natural functions that happen regardless of what we are thinking about. This is fine, but the line he draws is too cut and dry since ones consciousness can move into the non-conscious part of the mind with the right focus, or training or whatever you want to call it. Think Buddhist monks that can cause radical shifts in their body through meditation, bringing their pulse and breathing down to really low levels, or if you don't like the Eastern kind of example, then how about military trained snipers, who learn to control their body to get a better shot in between heartbeats and breathing? The point of these two examples is that the functions of the mind that Searle designates as non-conscious can in fact be consciously controlled in the right situations, which in the scope of the chapter in this book, means that the realm of consciousness is possibly farther reaching, or at least more dynamic than he is acknowledging. Which means (I think) that there is a more complex system at work than the simplified duality he posits (which one could draw an analogy to being similar to the mind/body duality he is (I think) successfully arguing against in the first half of the book. It's almost as if when we enter into the realm where science hasn't quite gotten the whole story on what is happening that Searle is reverting to the phantoms of either/or thinking that limit problem in such a way that the entire premise, or assumptions could be faulty.
I'm kind of rambling, I started this review feeling awake, and now I'm feeling like sleeping. I apologize if some of the last two paragraphs make no sense. I'll probably try to clarify some of what I'm thinking in my blog in the near future.
The ridiculousness of the question is that it's based on a bunch of assumptions that have been fought over to logical death for the past few hundred years, and no one outside of philosophers really give a shit about the question. Just take the perception part of the mind problem, there are a great many philosophers, really smart men (I don't know of any women who said these things), who believe we don't see the world, but only some sense of the world, that may or may not be an accurate representation of the world, that may or may not even be there, but could be, or could just be an idea in our minds, based on the fact that when we look at a coin at different angles the shape can change from being a circle to being elliptical, and that a table can look differently depending on if you are on one side, or crouch down at eye-level with it, or standing above it. Because these things look different it means that we don't see the thing it-self, but only some kind of impression of it, that is only our perception and not the thing-it-self (roughly). A five year old has the cognitive ability to realize that changing ones point of view makes something look different but doesn't change the thing, and that it is impossible to see anything from all sides and perspectives at once.
When you read grown men arguing about this stuff, and proving that this means something, one wonders why half of the philosophical world just threw their hands up, called an end to philosophy and went literary with no regard for the logic that can make otherwise intelligent people seriously believe things like this.
One can blame Descartes for all of this, and then Hume who brought a certain logical paradox between a person and their relationship to the world that got taken as being a true psychological or mental state instead of being a problem (even though Hume probably thought he was right and was describing the mind as it was, or maybe not, I don't know).
Searle's book is an attempt to clear out all of the bullshit that the questions of the mind have resulted in to, and give his own interpretation of the problem and it's solution. He does a nice job of clearing away the rubble of centuries of misguided formulations of the problems, and shoots lots of holes in contemporary attempts to solve the nature of the mind problem, but I have no idea if his solution is any better. This isn't the kind of book where he goes into enough detail for me to know that.
Instead of the title the book has, it should be called, Mind: A Brief Introduction to John Searle's Take on the Mind, not that this is a problem, it's just not shall I say an unbiased look at the mind problem.
From my own opinions and knowledge, I think that Searle might be partly right about the mind problem, but I think that there is something missing in his view, and maybe in his other works he gives a clearer explanation, or a more detailed description of what he actually thinks.
I, of course, have my own unfounded opinion about the solution to problems brought up in this book, but I have no proof, and I'm sure other people have thought of my ideas first, and I'm just going to keep it to myself for now, because it's much more fun playing with the logic in my head and trying to figure out how to put it into words at this point.
One thing that I think is missing in this book is any real focus on memory. It's brought up from time to time, but a few of the topics could have been expanded further by going into what Searle thinks memory is. The only time he really uses memory is in the chapter about the self, where I found it problematic. Is memory really a necessary condition to our knowledge of our self? Don't other people have a say in our conception of believing ourselves to be a self? I'm thinking of an extreme example, but recently I saw a documentary about a guy who just suddenly lost all memory of who he was, and he filmed himself on his quest to find out who he was. Is this man a new person? A different self? What about the people who knew him before, do they see him as the same person? There are problems that arise in this documentary that don't seem adequately covered in criteria of 'self-hood' that Searle plays with.
A second problem was in his distinction of conscious and unconscious states. He dismisses the unconscious, which could be ok, but puts certain things that one would say are unconscious in a non-conscious part of the mind, such as breathing and natural functions that happen regardless of what we are thinking about. This is fine, but the line he draws is too cut and dry since ones consciousness can move into the non-conscious part of the mind with the right focus, or training or whatever you want to call it. Think Buddhist monks that can cause radical shifts in their body through meditation, bringing their pulse and breathing down to really low levels, or if you don't like the Eastern kind of example, then how about military trained snipers, who learn to control their body to get a better shot in between heartbeats and breathing? The point of these two examples is that the functions of the mind that Searle designates as non-conscious can in fact be consciously controlled in the right situations, which in the scope of the chapter in this book, means that the realm of consciousness is possibly farther reaching, or at least more dynamic than he is acknowledging. Which means (I think) that there is a more complex system at work than the simplified duality he posits (which one could draw an analogy to being similar to the mind/body duality he is (I think) successfully arguing against in the first half of the book. It's almost as if when we enter into the realm where science hasn't quite gotten the whole story on what is happening that Searle is reverting to the phantoms of either/or thinking that limit problem in such a way that the entire premise, or assumptions could be faulty.
I'm kind of rambling, I started this review feeling awake, and now I'm feeling like sleeping. I apologize if some of the last two paragraphs make no sense. I'll probably try to clarify some of what I'm thinking in my blog in the near future.
December 7, 2023
This is a fascinating exposition of some of the primary issues pertaining to the philosophy of mind—and these issues are head-spinning, to put it mildly. This book prompts endless questions and opens a series of rabbit-holes that lead off in all directions. Man, I feel dizzy pondering questions such as: How does consciousness arise from the material brain? Do we have free will, and what exactly is it? How can we even possibly have free will given the random aspect of quantum mechanics at the subatomic level of matter? These topics are challenging (and quite often frustrating) brain food for anyone.
December 17, 2016
أنا معجب بسيرل في العموم، تعجبني تحليلاته،
ومنهجه القائم على محاكمة المسلمات، وإعادة صياغة المشاكل الفلسفية
استخدامه للمنطق ووضوحه . . شيء ممتع الحقيقة
ملاحظات عابرة على هامش الكتاب:
في رد سيرل على الحجة المستمدة من العلم ضد الواقعية الساذجة يقول:
"في طفولتي كانت الفرودية والماركسية أكثر أنواع المغالطات الأصلية
genetic fallacy
شيوعاً.
هل تشك في حقيقة الماركسية؟ = هذا يعني أن خلفيتك الطبقية البرجوازية ضللتك.
هل تشك في حقيقة تعاليم فرويد؟ هذا يبرهن على أنك ضحية كبتك الشخصي."
الحجة المستمدة من العلم لنقض فكرة الواقعية الساذجة (أو إدراكنا المباشر للعالم) تقول ببساطة: إن العمليات النيروبيولوجية للدماغ تسبب تجربة الإدراك، ولكن الشيء العقلي الوحيد الموجود في وعينا هو تلك العمليات، ولا يمكن الاتصال الإدراكي المباشر مع العالم الخارجي.
راسل بيقول:
"الواقعية الساذجة تؤدي إلى الفيزياء، والفيزياء إذا صدقت تبرهن على أن الواقعية الساذجة كاذبة" يعني فكرة إدراكنا المباشر للعالم الخارجي = متناقضة ذاتيا، تكذب نفسها.
يُعلق سيرل بإن الحجة المستمدة من العلم لا تكذب الواقعية الساذجة، لأن الحجة تقول إننا لو كنا قادرين نقدم تفسير سببي لإدراك العالم الحقيقي، إذن فلا نستطيع إدراك العالم . . فالحجة بتقع في المغالطة الأصلية genetic fallacy، وتفترض أن التفسير السببي لمصدر المعتقد، يفسر كيفية الحصول على المعتقد، إذن فالمعتقد كاذب.
يعني لو بنقول إن رؤيتنا لشيء أمام أعيننا، يحدث بسبب إنعكاس الضوء المسبب للتجربة البصرية، فكل ما رأيناه ليس الشيء إنما هو تجربتنا البصرية الناتجة عن عمليات نيروبيولوجية . . لكن التفسير السببي لرؤية الشيء أمام عنينا لا يبرهن إننا لا نرى الشيء فعلا أمام عنينا، في قفزة في البرهان وهي نفسها التي تُستخدم لدحض المعتقدات الدينية أو فكرة حرية الإرادة، فلو قادر أقدم تفسير سببي (عصبي) لمعتقدك الديني أو لشعورك بالإرادة الحرة، إذن معتقدك خاطئ أو إرادتك الحرة غير موجودة.
لم ينس سيرل على أن ينبه أن هذه المغالطة، لا يُسمع عنها الآن إلا من بعد الحداثيين!
==========
من القلش الفلسفي اللطيف على المدرسة السلوكية، نكتة بتقول إن زوجين بعد انتهاءهم من ممارسة الجنس، الزوج قال لزوجته لقد كانت تجربة رائعة بالنسبة (إليكِ) كيف كانت بالنسبة (إليّ).
المدرسة السوكية بتقترح إن الشيء الوحيد الممكن دراسته بموضوعية هو سلوك الإنسان، مع إهمال الحالات العقلية، ففي رفضها للثنائية؛ ترفض السلوكية أي شيء خاص بحالات باطنية، روحية، عقلية . . فأي اعتقاد داخلي عقلي يمكن اختزاله لسلوك خارجي أو استعداد للسلوك يمكن دراسته تجريبيًا، فالحالات العقلية ليس لها معنى إن مكنش لها وجود أصلا.
فالزوجين السلوكيين ممكن كل واحد فيهم يلاحظ سلوك التاني ويقول له هو كان حاسس بإيه!
ومنهجه القائم على محاكمة المسلمات، وإعادة صياغة المشاكل الفلسفية
استخدامه للمنطق ووضوحه . . شيء ممتع الحقيقة
ملاحظات عابرة على هامش الكتاب:
في رد سيرل على الحجة المستمدة من العلم ضد الواقعية الساذجة يقول:
"في طفولتي كانت الفرودية والماركسية أكثر أنواع المغالطات الأصلية
genetic fallacy
شيوعاً.
هل تشك في حقيقة الماركسية؟ = هذا يعني أن خلفيتك الطبقية البرجوازية ضللتك.
هل تشك في حقيقة تعاليم فرويد؟ هذا يبرهن على أنك ضحية كبتك الشخصي."
الحجة المستمدة من العلم لنقض فكرة الواقعية الساذجة (أو إدراكنا المباشر للعالم) تقول ببساطة: إن العمليات النيروبيولوجية للدماغ تسبب تجربة الإدراك، ولكن الشيء العقلي الوحيد الموجود في وعينا هو تلك العمليات، ولا يمكن الاتصال الإدراكي المباشر مع العالم الخارجي.
راسل بيقول:
"الواقعية الساذجة تؤدي إلى الفيزياء، والفيزياء إذا صدقت تبرهن على أن الواقعية الساذجة كاذبة" يعني فكرة إدراكنا المباشر للعالم الخارجي = متناقضة ذاتيا، تكذب نفسها.
يُعلق سيرل بإن الحجة المستمدة من العلم لا تكذب الواقعية الساذجة، لأن الحجة تقول إننا لو كنا قادرين نقدم تفسير سببي لإدراك العالم الحقيقي، إذن فلا نستطيع إدراك العالم . . فالحجة بتقع في المغالطة الأصلية genetic fallacy، وتفترض أن التفسير السببي لمصدر المعتقد، يفسر كيفية الحصول على المعتقد، إذن فالمعتقد كاذب.
يعني لو بنقول إن رؤيتنا لشيء أمام أعيننا، يحدث بسبب إنعكاس الضوء المسبب للتجربة البصرية، فكل ما رأيناه ليس الشيء إنما هو تجربتنا البصرية الناتجة عن عمليات نيروبيولوجية . . لكن التفسير السببي لرؤية الشيء أمام عنينا لا يبرهن إننا لا نرى الشيء فعلا أمام عنينا، في قفزة في البرهان وهي نفسها التي تُستخدم لدحض المعتقدات الدينية أو فكرة حرية الإرادة، فلو قادر أقدم تفسير سببي (عصبي) لمعتقدك الديني أو لشعورك بالإرادة الحرة، إذن معتقدك خاطئ أو إرادتك الحرة غير موجودة.
لم ينس سيرل على أن ينبه أن هذه المغالطة، لا يُسمع عنها الآن إلا من بعد الحداثيين!
==========
من القلش الفلسفي اللطيف على المدرسة السلوكية، نكتة بتقول إن زوجين بعد انتهاءهم من ممارسة الجنس، الزوج قال لزوجته لقد كانت تجربة رائعة بالنسبة (إليكِ) كيف كانت بالنسبة (إليّ).
المدرسة السوكية بتقترح إن الشيء الوحيد الممكن دراسته بموضوعية هو سلوك الإنسان، مع إهمال الحالات العقلية، ففي رفضها للثنائية؛ ترفض السلوكية أي شيء خاص بحالات باطنية، روحية، عقلية . . فأي اعتقاد داخلي عقلي يمكن اختزاله لسلوك خارجي أو استعداد للسلوك يمكن دراسته تجريبيًا، فالحالات العقلية ليس لها معنى إن مكنش لها وجود أصلا.
فالزوجين السلوكيين ممكن كل واحد فيهم يلاحظ سلوك التاني ويقول له هو كان حاسس بإيه!
February 22, 2016
"Philosophy begins with a mystery and wonder at what any sane person regards as too obvious to worry about." - John R. Searle.
An extremely compelling introduction to consciousness, perception, causation and personal identity. Full to the brim with whimsical thought experiments - the zombie, 'what is it like to be a bat?', the brain in a vat - one really begins to understand the problems that plague the Philosophy of Mind.
An extremely compelling introduction to consciousness, perception, causation and personal identity. Full to the brim with whimsical thought experiments - the zombie, 'what is it like to be a bat?', the brain in a vat - one really begins to understand the problems that plague the Philosophy of Mind.
April 13, 2020
دو نظريه ي اساسي اي كه در فلسفه ذهن وجود دارند دوئاليسم و ماترياليسم هستند. دوئاليست ها معتقدند دو جوهر در جهان وجود دارد، جوهر مادي و جوهر ذهني، اين ديدگاه با دكارت اغاز شد. البته كه امروزه كساني كه به دوگانه انگاري معتقدند مثل دكارت دو جوهر جدا از هم را قبول ندارند چون نقدهاي زيادي به اين ديدگاه وارد است مثل اينكه چطور در زنجيره ي علي امري ذهني ميتواند بر امري مادي اثر گذار باشد اما همچنان اگاهي را امري جدا از ماده مي دانند. مبناي استدلال انها در رد ماتريالسيم كه همه چيز را در جهان مادي ميداند و اگاهي را قبو ل ندارد كواليا است، يعني ويژگي كيفي تجارب ما.
سرل ماترياليستي است كه اگاهي را قبول دارد و ان را جزيي از فرايند عصب زيست شناختي ما ميداند. او معتقد است دو جهان وجود ندارد، فقط يك جهان وجود دارد كه در دو سطح توصيف مي شود.
در اين كتاب سرل موضوعات اساسي فلسفه ذهن را بيان كرده، نقدهايي كه به انها وارد است را بررسي كرده و سپس نظرات خودش را بيان كرده است. مثال هاي خيلي خوبي هم زده است. 
من هنوز درباره ي اينكه خودم چه عقيده اي دارم تصميم نگرفتم ولي ديدگاه سرل جالب است.
September 25, 2009
Full disclosure before beginning this review of John Searle's Mind. Outside of speculative fiction and impressive displays of raw logic, I'm not a big fan of philosophy, far preferring empirically-based observation. I like to tell myself that I'm comfortable with the unknown. Got a way to discover something? Great! You do it (or at least describe it so others can do it). Just don't come yammering your certainties at me based exclusively on your own navel gazing. For me, faith is a pasttime, not a means of ordering my world.
So why, then, bother to read a book on the philosophy of mind? Well, I do enjoy books which promise to reveal the answers at the back so-to-speak, and this one promised to deliver by recapping the evolution of thought on thought… and the last chapter was supposed to synopsize the state of the art of cognitive neuroscience, so hey, not too shabby. Searle is an extremely elegant writer, who takes extreme care to avoid obfuscating academic mumbo-jumbo and jargon. For example, at page 84, he debunks attempts to dismiss subjectivity as a superficial by-product of organic brain activity with, "There are lots of concepts where the surface features of the phenomena are more interesting than the microstructure. Consider mud or Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Mud behavior is molecular behavior but that is not the interesting thing about mud, so few people are anxious to insist: 'Mud can be reduced to molecular behavior,' though they could if they really wanted to. Similarly with Beethoven…. The music critic who writes, 'All I could hear were wave motions,' has missed the point of the performance." (On that note, what makes going to a performance of Beethoven's Ninth like listening to the ocean? All you can hear are… oh, never mind.) Seriously, Searle can really be a delight to read, and he in fact does deliver on the book's promise to trace (and then debunk) theories of consciousness from Rene Descartes' mind/body dualism to David Chalmers' avowed belief in the existence of a conscious thermostat (cited on p. 104). Personally, I prefer Philip K. Dick's proposition of a pair of happy brown oxford shoes, but hey, to each his own.
As Searle defines it, intangibility is the problem of consciousness that has so troubled philosophers through the ages. Pain is intangible. Our perception of color is intangible. My desire to enjoy an oreo-chip hot fudge sundae while nattering on about the way the brain works is intangible (but, I hope, widely-shared nonetheless). While Searle does walk the reader through the various attempts to solve this problem (in the process almost making me care about it), I was immensely disappointed when it came time for him to offer his own solution. I mean here's a self-described philosopher who professes, "It is a logical possibility, though I think extremely unlikely, that when our bodies are destroyed, our souls will go marching on. I have not tried to show that this is an impossibility (indeed, I wish it were true), but rather that it is inconsistent with just about everything else we know about how the universe works and therefore it is irrational to believe in it." (p. 92) That pretty much sums up my world view right there.
The problem I have is that Searle moves from this rigorous statement of rationality to one which throws the whole argument out the window. Recall my Searle quote about Beethoven and mud two paragraphs up. Well, it turns out that's the crux of the matter. Searle asserts that consciousness is a nonsuperficial neurobiological by-product. It's just what happens when the nervous system works properly. Sure we don't know why that is, but so what? Just accept it. Don't get me wrong. I agree with this position. It's essentially what I came to this book believing anyway. However, it completely takes the wind out of a book's sails to take great lengths to analyze a concept only to dismiss it out of hand as superfluous and be done with it. I mean, why bother at all?
Searle goes on to tackle free will (sort of, he concludes "We really do not know how free will exists in the brain, if it exists at all," at p. 164); how it is that our sense of self can survive unconsciousness (uh, Searle? It's called 'memory,' you can look it up); and the problem of perception (a bubble he bursts on p. 181 with "I think the argument most likely to convince most people in the history of [the subject of how it is that we can see our hand waving in front of our face:] is the argument from science. But in the history of philosophy the argument that has been more influential among philosophers is called the argument from illusion.") Searle goes on of course from here at length with the argument from illusion, but at this point, I'm wholly in the camp of the "most people." I simply couldn't care less.
Why does Searle?
So why, then, bother to read a book on the philosophy of mind? Well, I do enjoy books which promise to reveal the answers at the back so-to-speak, and this one promised to deliver by recapping the evolution of thought on thought… and the last chapter was supposed to synopsize the state of the art of cognitive neuroscience, so hey, not too shabby. Searle is an extremely elegant writer, who takes extreme care to avoid obfuscating academic mumbo-jumbo and jargon. For example, at page 84, he debunks attempts to dismiss subjectivity as a superficial by-product of organic brain activity with, "There are lots of concepts where the surface features of the phenomena are more interesting than the microstructure. Consider mud or Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Mud behavior is molecular behavior but that is not the interesting thing about mud, so few people are anxious to insist: 'Mud can be reduced to molecular behavior,' though they could if they really wanted to. Similarly with Beethoven…. The music critic who writes, 'All I could hear were wave motions,' has missed the point of the performance." (On that note, what makes going to a performance of Beethoven's Ninth like listening to the ocean? All you can hear are… oh, never mind.) Seriously, Searle can really be a delight to read, and he in fact does deliver on the book's promise to trace (and then debunk) theories of consciousness from Rene Descartes' mind/body dualism to David Chalmers' avowed belief in the existence of a conscious thermostat (cited on p. 104). Personally, I prefer Philip K. Dick's proposition of a pair of happy brown oxford shoes, but hey, to each his own.
As Searle defines it, intangibility is the problem of consciousness that has so troubled philosophers through the ages. Pain is intangible. Our perception of color is intangible. My desire to enjoy an oreo-chip hot fudge sundae while nattering on about the way the brain works is intangible (but, I hope, widely-shared nonetheless). While Searle does walk the reader through the various attempts to solve this problem (in the process almost making me care about it), I was immensely disappointed when it came time for him to offer his own solution. I mean here's a self-described philosopher who professes, "It is a logical possibility, though I think extremely unlikely, that when our bodies are destroyed, our souls will go marching on. I have not tried to show that this is an impossibility (indeed, I wish it were true), but rather that it is inconsistent with just about everything else we know about how the universe works and therefore it is irrational to believe in it." (p. 92) That pretty much sums up my world view right there.
The problem I have is that Searle moves from this rigorous statement of rationality to one which throws the whole argument out the window. Recall my Searle quote about Beethoven and mud two paragraphs up. Well, it turns out that's the crux of the matter. Searle asserts that consciousness is a nonsuperficial neurobiological by-product. It's just what happens when the nervous system works properly. Sure we don't know why that is, but so what? Just accept it. Don't get me wrong. I agree with this position. It's essentially what I came to this book believing anyway. However, it completely takes the wind out of a book's sails to take great lengths to analyze a concept only to dismiss it out of hand as superfluous and be done with it. I mean, why bother at all?
Searle goes on to tackle free will (sort of, he concludes "We really do not know how free will exists in the brain, if it exists at all," at p. 164); how it is that our sense of self can survive unconsciousness (uh, Searle? It's called 'memory,' you can look it up); and the problem of perception (a bubble he bursts on p. 181 with "I think the argument most likely to convince most people in the history of [the subject of how it is that we can see our hand waving in front of our face:] is the argument from science. But in the history of philosophy the argument that has been more influential among philosophers is called the argument from illusion.") Searle goes on of course from here at length with the argument from illusion, but at this point, I'm wholly in the camp of the "most people." I simply couldn't care less.
Why does Searle?
Read
June 7, 2012When I read John Searle-- unlike many of the other analytic philosophers-- I get the feeling I'm dealing not with a specialist, but with a broad-ranging and fierce intellect. That being said, he faces what I feel to be the number one problem facing modern analytic philosophy-- a lot of it seems to be a very pointless language game, relying more on misapprehension of definition than anything else.
That being said, it is a very good primer on philosophy of mind, and I really do feel that Searle's Chinese room concept is a very valuable concept. It's just not ideal. I'm still curious to hear more of the man's ideas.
That being said, it is a very good primer on philosophy of mind, and I really do feel that Searle's Chinese room concept is a very valuable concept. It's just not ideal. I'm still curious to hear more of the man's ideas.
Read
January 28, 2016Searle, the hobgoblin of philosophy of mind, lets his overly defensive, grating personality shine through in this breezy introduction.
March 30, 2017
العقل.. مدخل موجز
عالم المعرفة/343
تأليف/ جون ر. سيرل
............................
حينما قررت البدء في قراءة هذا الكتاب توقعت أني سأجده عن العقل من منظور علم النفس. لكن ما اكتشفته ��ن الكتاب عن العقل لكن من منظور فلسفي. فالكتاب الواقع في أقل قليلا من المائتين وخمسين صفحة ينقسم إلي أحد عشر فصلا بدأ مؤلفه بالحديث عن الأسباب التي دفعته لتأليف هذا الكتاب، فتحدث أولا عن ثلاثة من أسوأ المشكلات التي تقابل من يتحدثون عن العقل. هذه المشكلات هي: كيف يمكن للتجارب الواعية، كتجربة الجرح مثلا، أن تتسبب في حدوث تجربة عقلية وهي الألم؟ وهذه المشكلة يطلق عليها مشكلة "العقل والجسد". المشكلة الثانية هي كيف يمكن للقصد، مثل قصد الحركة، وهو خبرة عقلية، أن ينتج عنها أثر مادي، وهو الحركة الفعلية؟ وهذه تسمي "مشكلة السببية العقلية". المشكلة الثالثة هي كيف يمكن لأفكارك، وهي داخل رأسك، أن تشير إلي أماكن بعيدة تماما في العالم الخارجي؟ وهذه تسمي "مشكلة القصدية".
الفصل الأول تحدث فيه الكاتب عن اثنتا عشرة مشكلة في فلسفة العقل. فبدأ بالتأكيد علي أن فلسفة العقل بدأت فعليا بأعمال الفيلسوف ديكارت، وأشهر مبدأ لديكارت هو الثنائية، الذي يقسم فيه الموجودات إلي جواهر مادية وجواهر عقلية. وحدد ماهية العقل بأنها الوعي وماهية الجسد بالامتداد في ثلاثة أبعاد. وكان لهذه الثنائية أهميتها الشديدة لأنها فصلت عالم العلوم عن عالم الدين.
ناقش الفصل الأول اثنتا عشرة مشكلة هي:
1_ مشكلة العقل والجسد.
كيف يمكن لأي شيء في العقل أن يسبب شيء في الجسد، وكيف يمكن لأي شيء في الجسد أن يسبب شيء في العقل؟
2_ مشكلة العقول الأخرى.
وتبحث في كيفية التأكد من أن لدي الآخرين عقولا.
3_ مشكلة الشكية في العالم الخارجي.
4_ تحليل الإدراك.
وفق رأي ديكارت فإن المعرفة الوحيدة هي قدرتي علي التعرف علي محتويات عقلي، لكني هل توجد طريقة أتعرف بها علي محتويات العالم من حولي والتأكد من حقيقة ما أراه؟
5_ مشكلة حرية الإرادة.
6_ مشكلة الذات والهوية الشخصية.
وهذه المشكلة يراها الشخص الثنائي سهلة لأن الهوية تتعلق بالجوهر العقلي والنفس الخالدة ولا تتعلق بالجسد.
7_ هل عند الحيوانات عقول؟
والإجماع فيها أن الحيوانات لا تملك عقولا. وأن العقول هي الفارق الحاسم بين الإنسان والحيوانات.
8_ مشكلة النوم.
يري ديكارت أن من يتوقف عن الوعي يتوقف عن الوجود. لكنه يري أن الإنسان عند النوم لا يتوقف عن الوعي تماما، بل بنسبة أقل من 100%.
9_ مشكلة القصدية.
والقصدية لفظة تعني القدرة في العقل التي تمكن الحالات العقلية من الإشارة الحالات الواقعية المغايرة عنها في العالم. والمشكلة هنا، لنفرض أنني أعتقد أن جورج بوش في واشنطن، كيف يمكن لأفكاري أن تسافر كل هذا الطريق؟
10_ السببية العقلية والظاهراتية المصاحبية.
11_ اللاوعي.
وتتحدث عن العمليات العقلية التي تحدث في العقل لكن ون مظاهر واعية.
12_ التفسير السيكولوجي الاجتماعي.
الفصل الثاني تحدث فيه الكاتب عن اللجوء للمادية، يري فيه المؤلف أن الثنائية ناسبت المؤمنين بالأديان؛ لأنها تماشت مع إيمانهم بوجود حقيقة جوهرية باقية بعد فناء الجسد. لكن الفلسفة العقلية الأكثر تأثيرا الآن هي المادية التي أصبحت كالدين هذه الأيام. وأقدم أنواع المادية هي ما يعرف بالسلوكية، وهي في صيغتها الأولية تشير إلي أن العقل ليس سوى سلوك الجسد.
في الفصل الثالث ناقش حججا ضد المادية.
في الفصل الرابع والخامس تحدث عن الوعي ومشكلة العقل والجسد وبنية الوعي والنيروبولوجيا. تحدث فيه عن التمييز بين العقلي والمادي، وتحدث عن صفات الوعي.
في الفصل السادس تحدث عن القصدية، وخصصه للحديث ع مشكلة كيف لفكرة في العقل أن تشير إلي أو تسافر مسافات لمكان آخر في العالم؟
في الفصل السابع حاول الإجابة عن سؤال، كيف يمكن لعمليات تحدث في العقل أن تكون سببا لأحداث واقعية في العالم الخارجي. حاول فيه الاستفادة من تفسير هيوم للسببية.
في الفصل الثامن خصصه للحديث عن الإرادة الحرة. تحدث فيه عن سبب شعورنا بوجود مشكلة الإرادة الإنسانية وهل هي حرة أو غير حرة.
في الفصل التاسع تحدث فيه عن اللاوعي وتفسير السلوك، أشار فيه إلي الجديد في علم النفس ودور فرويد في كشف دور اللاوعي في تفسير السلوك الإنساني.
في الفصل العاشر تحدث عن الإدراك.
في الفصل الحادي عشر تحدث عن الذات.
هذا الكتاب مادته صعبة جدا، ومملة جدا، وليس من السهل هضمها، ولذلك لم أتمكن من متابعة القراءة في صفحات الكتاب بدقة كالمعتاد، فتحركت حركة سريعة بين صفحاته واكتفيت بأخذ فكرة سريعة عنه.
عالم المعرفة/343
تأليف/ جون ر. سيرل
............................
حينما قررت البدء في قراءة هذا الكتاب توقعت أني سأجده عن العقل من منظور علم النفس. لكن ما اكتشفته ��ن الكتاب عن العقل لكن من منظور فلسفي. فالكتاب الواقع في أقل قليلا من المائتين وخمسين صفحة ينقسم إلي أحد عشر فصلا بدأ مؤلفه بالحديث عن الأسباب التي دفعته لتأليف هذا الكتاب، فتحدث أولا عن ثلاثة من أسوأ المشكلات التي تقابل من يتحدثون عن العقل. هذه المشكلات هي: كيف يمكن للتجارب الواعية، كتجربة الجرح مثلا، أن تتسبب في حدوث تجربة عقلية وهي الألم؟ وهذه المشكلة يطلق عليها مشكلة "العقل والجسد". المشكلة الثانية هي كيف يمكن للقصد، مثل قصد الحركة، وهو خبرة عقلية، أن ينتج عنها أثر مادي، وهو الحركة الفعلية؟ وهذه تسمي "مشكلة السببية العقلية". المشكلة الثالثة هي كيف يمكن لأفكارك، وهي داخل رأسك، أن تشير إلي أماكن بعيدة تماما في العالم الخارجي؟ وهذه تسمي "مشكلة القصدية".
الفصل الأول تحدث فيه الكاتب عن اثنتا عشرة مشكلة في فلسفة العقل. فبدأ بالتأكيد علي أن فلسفة العقل بدأت فعليا بأعمال الفيلسوف ديكارت، وأشهر مبدأ لديكارت هو الثنائية، الذي يقسم فيه الموجودات إلي جواهر مادية وجواهر عقلية. وحدد ماهية العقل بأنها الوعي وماهية الجسد بالامتداد في ثلاثة أبعاد. وكان لهذه الثنائية أهميتها الشديدة لأنها فصلت عالم العلوم عن عالم الدين.
ناقش الفصل الأول اثنتا عشرة مشكلة هي:
1_ مشكلة العقل والجسد.
كيف يمكن لأي شيء في العقل أن يسبب شيء في الجسد، وكيف يمكن لأي شيء في الجسد أن يسبب شيء في العقل؟
2_ مشكلة العقول الأخرى.
وتبحث في كيفية التأكد من أن لدي الآخرين عقولا.
3_ مشكلة الشكية في العالم الخارجي.
4_ تحليل الإدراك.
وفق رأي ديكارت فإن المعرفة الوحيدة هي قدرتي علي التعرف علي محتويات عقلي، لكني هل توجد طريقة أتعرف بها علي محتويات العالم من حولي والتأكد من حقيقة ما أراه؟
5_ مشكلة حرية الإرادة.
6_ مشكلة الذات والهوية الشخصية.
وهذه المشكلة يراها الشخص الثنائي سهلة لأن الهوية تتعلق بالجوهر العقلي والنفس الخالدة ولا تتعلق بالجسد.
7_ هل عند الحيوانات عقول؟
والإجماع فيها أن الحيوانات لا تملك عقولا. وأن العقول هي الفارق الحاسم بين الإنسان والحيوانات.
8_ مشكلة النوم.
يري ديكارت أن من يتوقف عن الوعي يتوقف عن الوجود. لكنه يري أن الإنسان عند النوم لا يتوقف عن الوعي تماما، بل بنسبة أقل من 100%.
9_ مشكلة القصدية.
والقصدية لفظة تعني القدرة في العقل التي تمكن الحالات العقلية من الإشارة الحالات الواقعية المغايرة عنها في العالم. والمشكلة هنا، لنفرض أنني أعتقد أن جورج بوش في واشنطن، كيف يمكن لأفكاري أن تسافر كل هذا الطريق؟
10_ السببية العقلية والظاهراتية المصاحبية.
11_ اللاوعي.
وتتحدث عن العمليات العقلية التي تحدث في العقل لكن ون مظاهر واعية.
12_ التفسير السيكولوجي الاجتماعي.
الفصل الثاني تحدث فيه الكاتب عن اللجوء للمادية، يري فيه المؤلف أن الثنائية ناسبت المؤمنين بالأديان؛ لأنها تماشت مع إيمانهم بوجود حقيقة جوهرية باقية بعد فناء الجسد. لكن الفلسفة العقلية الأكثر تأثيرا الآن هي المادية التي أصبحت كالدين هذه الأيام. وأقدم أنواع المادية هي ما يعرف بالسلوكية، وهي في صيغتها الأولية تشير إلي أن العقل ليس سوى سلوك الجسد.
في الفصل الثالث ناقش حججا ضد المادية.
في الفصل الرابع والخامس تحدث عن الوعي ومشكلة العقل والجسد وبنية الوعي والنيروبولوجيا. تحدث فيه عن التمييز بين العقلي والمادي، وتحدث عن صفات الوعي.
في الفصل السادس تحدث عن القصدية، وخصصه للحديث ع مشكلة كيف لفكرة في العقل أن تشير إلي أو تسافر مسافات لمكان آخر في العالم؟
في الفصل السابع حاول الإجابة عن سؤال، كيف يمكن لعمليات تحدث في العقل أن تكون سببا لأحداث واقعية في العالم الخارجي. حاول فيه الاستفادة من تفسير هيوم للسببية.
في الفصل الثامن خصصه للحديث عن الإرادة الحرة. تحدث فيه عن سبب شعورنا بوجود مشكلة الإرادة الإنسانية وهل هي حرة أو غير حرة.
في الفصل التاسع تحدث فيه عن اللاوعي وتفسير السلوك، أشار فيه إلي الجديد في علم النفس ودور فرويد في كشف دور اللاوعي في تفسير السلوك الإنساني.
في الفصل العاشر تحدث عن الإدراك.
في الفصل الحادي عشر تحدث عن الذات.
هذا الكتاب مادته صعبة جدا، ومملة جدا، وليس من السهل هضمها، ولذلك لم أتمكن من متابعة القراءة في صفحات الكتاب بدقة كالمعتاد، فتحركت حركة سريعة بين صفحاته واكتفيت بأخذ فكرة سريعة عنه.
April 14, 2016
This book is John Searle's attempt at giving a brief overview of what he sees as the most pressing questions in the philosophy of mind.
The most central issue of them all is to give an account of the nature of consciousness and how it fits into what we know about the world. For Searle, the two most influential ways of answering this problem—dualism and materialism—do not hold water.
When it comes to dualism, it's simply not very coherent. It supposes that mind and body are different things altogether, consisting of different types of substance or in different realms if you will. It's hard to find any satisfying account of how these separate realms are able to intersect causally, and it does not jive very well with what we know from modern science: everything points to consciousness being quite inseparable from the physical body—the soul can be altered by surgery, chemicals, a lack of oxygen, or any other influence upon the physical brain.
Various forms of materialism, on the other hand, are more fashionable these days, especially among the scientifically minded. There are so many flavors in this group, but the basic premise underlying them is that the world consists entirely of physical particles in fields of force, and nothing over and above this. The mind, being a part of our world, must therefore also be entirely be explainable in these physical terms. So far, so good, right? The problem for Searle is the extent that these views tend to end up in reductionism. Everything is ultimately to be reduced to the lowest level of explanation, and these explanations take the form of third-person ontology. However, it seems quite vividly to us that our consciousness has certain subjective qualities, experiences that have a first-person ontology: there is a certain feel to my experience of the color red right now, for instance. The answer of many radical materialists is to in some way or another explain away this phenomena, often suggesting that it is an illusion. One famous example of this thinking taken to its extreme, and by now the butt of several jokes, is behaviorism. The behaviorists had the idea that the postulation of a mind couldn't be studied at all, and hence it must be disposed of—all there really is, is behavior. In that vein, some philosophers have suggested that consciousness isn't something that really exists, only something we postulate out of convenience for explaining behavior. Searle, in my view correctly, caustically points out that this is as silly as suggesting that feet is only something we postulate for the convenience of explaining our walking behavior. We know very well from our experience that we have both feet and subjective conscious experiences.
Searle spends a good deal of time on the somewhat more sophisticated materialist thesis of functionalism, and first and foremost the functionalism that has come to be known as computational theory of mind. Here he also gives an outline and defense of his famous Chinese room argument. I won't go into the details of this discussion
But what, then, is Searle's own answer to the problem of the nature of consciousness? The way to proceed is to get rid of some of the old and loaded terminology inherent in the schism between the mental and physical. If you look at the facts of what we know, what we're left with is consciousness being a feature of the brain at the systemic level. As such it is causally reducible to the micro-level behavior of the neurons and neurotransmitters, and so on. However, it is not thereby ontologically reducible to these micro-level explanations—we still have a qualitative, subjective conscious experience that can not be captured in such third-person accounts. Consciousness is a biological feature of the brain at the system-level, much like digestion is a biological feature of the digestive system. Searle calls his view biological naturalism.
I think I generally agree with the view that he outlines. However, certain things appear a bit unclear to me. He proposes that the question of how our consciousness functions is to be answered by neurobiology, something I again generally agree with. But while neurobiology will undoubtedly give us plenty of answers to the technical and empirical questions about consciousness, and may do it in a way that doesn't have to deny the fact of our qualitative experiences, won't the explanations in a fundamental sense still be third-person explanations? Even if we were at the point where we could give a full neurobiological account of the functions our brain carries out, wouldn't the so-called hard problem of consciousness still persist to some extent? Perhaps not, I am not sure.
Outside of this question, Searle also gives some treatment to topics like intentionality, mental causation, free will, the unconscious, and the self. A prime virtue of the book is his admirably clear writing style. He doesn't seek to obfuscate, but lays out the arguments clearly and logically. I do get the feeling, here as in some of his other work, that he is at times somewhat uncharitable to his opponents, perhaps arguing some straw men, and he does sometimes jump rather quickly to the point of "let's just do it like this, and poof, you see I'm obviously right". Nonetheless, on the whole, I found this to be an accessible and reasoned introduction to some of the most tantalizing questions of contemporary philosophy.
The most central issue of them all is to give an account of the nature of consciousness and how it fits into what we know about the world. For Searle, the two most influential ways of answering this problem—dualism and materialism—do not hold water.
When it comes to dualism, it's simply not very coherent. It supposes that mind and body are different things altogether, consisting of different types of substance or in different realms if you will. It's hard to find any satisfying account of how these separate realms are able to intersect causally, and it does not jive very well with what we know from modern science: everything points to consciousness being quite inseparable from the physical body—the soul can be altered by surgery, chemicals, a lack of oxygen, or any other influence upon the physical brain.
Various forms of materialism, on the other hand, are more fashionable these days, especially among the scientifically minded. There are so many flavors in this group, but the basic premise underlying them is that the world consists entirely of physical particles in fields of force, and nothing over and above this. The mind, being a part of our world, must therefore also be entirely be explainable in these physical terms. So far, so good, right? The problem for Searle is the extent that these views tend to end up in reductionism. Everything is ultimately to be reduced to the lowest level of explanation, and these explanations take the form of third-person ontology. However, it seems quite vividly to us that our consciousness has certain subjective qualities, experiences that have a first-person ontology: there is a certain feel to my experience of the color red right now, for instance. The answer of many radical materialists is to in some way or another explain away this phenomena, often suggesting that it is an illusion. One famous example of this thinking taken to its extreme, and by now the butt of several jokes, is behaviorism. The behaviorists had the idea that the postulation of a mind couldn't be studied at all, and hence it must be disposed of—all there really is, is behavior. In that vein, some philosophers have suggested that consciousness isn't something that really exists, only something we postulate out of convenience for explaining behavior. Searle, in my view correctly, caustically points out that this is as silly as suggesting that feet is only something we postulate for the convenience of explaining our walking behavior. We know very well from our experience that we have both feet and subjective conscious experiences.
Searle spends a good deal of time on the somewhat more sophisticated materialist thesis of functionalism, and first and foremost the functionalism that has come to be known as computational theory of mind. Here he also gives an outline and defense of his famous Chinese room argument. I won't go into the details of this discussion
But what, then, is Searle's own answer to the problem of the nature of consciousness? The way to proceed is to get rid of some of the old and loaded terminology inherent in the schism between the mental and physical. If you look at the facts of what we know, what we're left with is consciousness being a feature of the brain at the systemic level. As such it is causally reducible to the micro-level behavior of the neurons and neurotransmitters, and so on. However, it is not thereby ontologically reducible to these micro-level explanations—we still have a qualitative, subjective conscious experience that can not be captured in such third-person accounts. Consciousness is a biological feature of the brain at the system-level, much like digestion is a biological feature of the digestive system. Searle calls his view biological naturalism.
I think I generally agree with the view that he outlines. However, certain things appear a bit unclear to me. He proposes that the question of how our consciousness functions is to be answered by neurobiology, something I again generally agree with. But while neurobiology will undoubtedly give us plenty of answers to the technical and empirical questions about consciousness, and may do it in a way that doesn't have to deny the fact of our qualitative experiences, won't the explanations in a fundamental sense still be third-person explanations? Even if we were at the point where we could give a full neurobiological account of the functions our brain carries out, wouldn't the so-called hard problem of consciousness still persist to some extent? Perhaps not, I am not sure.
Outside of this question, Searle also gives some treatment to topics like intentionality, mental causation, free will, the unconscious, and the self. A prime virtue of the book is his admirably clear writing style. He doesn't seek to obfuscate, but lays out the arguments clearly and logically. I do get the feeling, here as in some of his other work, that he is at times somewhat uncharitable to his opponents, perhaps arguing some straw men, and he does sometimes jump rather quickly to the point of "let's just do it like this, and poof, you see I'm obviously right". Nonetheless, on the whole, I found this to be an accessible and reasoned introduction to some of the most tantalizing questions of contemporary philosophy.
September 2, 2012
While this book was not what I expected nor what the title seems to advertise, I was pleasantly surprised and immensely enjoyed reading it. Based upon the title (and no additional research), I assumed that this book would indeed by "a brief introduction" to the philosophy of mind. I expected something like a "Philosophy of Mind for Dummies" approach as is typical of such books and set out to introduce myself to the topic. Within the first chapter, however, I encountered the lament of the author that he is not able to simply inform his students and readers of the truth (as he sees it, though he wouldn't acknowledge that point) but instead must tell them about the other opinions and the history of those opinions. Any introduction that starts that way is no longer an introduction. That said, Searle does, in a sense, and certainly with a great deal of bias, introduce us to many of the most important issues in the philosophy of mind. He does so, of course, in a way that will lead us to his own opinion and, he hopes, convince us of it, but he does introduce nonetheless.
Having said all of that, I do think that Searle's approach is a very interesting one that is perhaps one of the best (that is, one with the fewest problems) approaches within philosophy of mind today. He seeks to overcome the historical categories and diametric opposites such as "dualism" and "materialism" and instead posit a sort of "third way" which he views as the common sense approach in between the two extremes. While this is clever and, as I've already said, leads us out of many of the problems of dualism and materialism, I think that it also brings his ideas into an area which suffers from many of the same problems as dualism and materialism. That is, while avoiding certain problems of each philosophy, he has taken on certain problems from both.
Overall, this book is an excellent and very readable read (which is saying a lot for a book on the philosophy of mind; "readable" is rarely an apt description for works on such a subject). I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the philosophy of mind and especially anyone who wasn't lost the child's ability to question things that everyone else just takes for granted.
Having said all of that, I do think that Searle's approach is a very interesting one that is perhaps one of the best (that is, one with the fewest problems) approaches within philosophy of mind today. He seeks to overcome the historical categories and diametric opposites such as "dualism" and "materialism" and instead posit a sort of "third way" which he views as the common sense approach in between the two extremes. While this is clever and, as I've already said, leads us out of many of the problems of dualism and materialism, I think that it also brings his ideas into an area which suffers from many of the same problems as dualism and materialism. That is, while avoiding certain problems of each philosophy, he has taken on certain problems from both.
Overall, this book is an excellent and very readable read (which is saying a lot for a book on the philosophy of mind; "readable" is rarely an apt description for works on such a subject). I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the philosophy of mind and especially anyone who wasn't lost the child's ability to question things that everyone else just takes for granted.
August 8, 2015
" أسوأ الأشياء التي يمكن القيام بها هي أن توحي للقراءأنهم يفهمون شيئًا بينما في الواقع لا يفهمونه"
January 16, 2012
I thought a lot about whether to give this book four or five stars. Ultimately, I am giving it five stars because although the book is superb, it's a strangely written little book. Purportedly, John R. Searle set out to write an "intro to" text on the philosophy of the mind, and this book is that "intro to". Yet the text is not really for a new-comer to the field of cognitive science or philosophy of the mind — although I disagree with pretty much every conclusion and method in the text, I'd suggest Consciousness Explained as a better book for a new-comer. You probably also want to pick up Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain or The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human to get a good handle on the cognitive science and some of the complexities of the mind's structure. Once you have those books under your belt, this is a superb read, absolutely worth five stars...but it's definitely not the "intro to" that it advertises itself to be, so I'm giving it four stars for its pedagogical fib. It's a cute rhetorical move on Searle's part, but the book is a lot easier to read if you realize it's not what it is making itself out to be.
The book starts with recounting Descartes, because that is where both the philosophy of the mind started and where it was placed on the wrong track. Although the temptation for a journeyman philosopher might be to skip this part, don't — Searle's framing of the argument is actually setting up his response to it, so pay careful attention to what it is he is laying out. The bulk of the book lays out and defends Searle's biological naturalism, with the final few chapters turning towards frontiers in Searle's philosophy on the matter. The book was extremely convincing to me (although I was fondly disposed towards him to begin with), excepting Searle's treatment of free will (which even he admits is fragmentary).
As a comprehensive overview of the philosophy of mind and Searle's most concise portrayal of his particular take, this book is absolutely superb. Searle argues that we have been using the wrong models of the body and mind, and if we instead refocus our attention on the actual facts of the matter, a lot of the problems simply evaporate. Although that sounds arrogant, the book is actually surprisingly humble, and Searle comes out on a couple of different occasions and outright admits that he does not know the answer to certain questions. All in all, the book is very enjoyable, insightful, and entertaining. It is a kind of "real world" engagement by a philosopher with serious technical chops, which is absolutely wonderful to experience. Definitely read it if you've made it this far into my review.
The book starts with recounting Descartes, because that is where both the philosophy of the mind started and where it was placed on the wrong track. Although the temptation for a journeyman philosopher might be to skip this part, don't — Searle's framing of the argument is actually setting up his response to it, so pay careful attention to what it is he is laying out. The bulk of the book lays out and defends Searle's biological naturalism, with the final few chapters turning towards frontiers in Searle's philosophy on the matter. The book was extremely convincing to me (although I was fondly disposed towards him to begin with), excepting Searle's treatment of free will (which even he admits is fragmentary).
As a comprehensive overview of the philosophy of mind and Searle's most concise portrayal of his particular take, this book is absolutely superb. Searle argues that we have been using the wrong models of the body and mind, and if we instead refocus our attention on the actual facts of the matter, a lot of the problems simply evaporate. Although that sounds arrogant, the book is actually surprisingly humble, and Searle comes out on a couple of different occasions and outright admits that he does not know the answer to certain questions. All in all, the book is very enjoyable, insightful, and entertaining. It is a kind of "real world" engagement by a philosopher with serious technical chops, which is absolutely wonderful to experience. Definitely read it if you've made it this far into my review.
October 20, 2014
This concise work by an important philosopher of language provides a somewhat intriguing but ultimately wrong-headed if not outright dangerous approach to the phenomena of language and cognition. There are many category errors in MIND: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION. I will mention only two.
First of all, Searle shares with Chomsky and with most mainstream linguists a certain dogmatic belief. Roughly, this belief is that language is for thinking, and any other reflexes that are enabled by the minds of us rational animals (society, art, religion, economics, law, auto repair, intimacy, family, whatever) are secondary, maybe even wholly derivative and epiphenomenal, to the real purpose, telos, and function of the MIND, which is to stand at the professor's podium and say stuff that sounds good and rational. To suggest that a culture that is expressed by mind(s) and a society that hangs together by mind(s) are solely unintended consequences of the human brain is to admit a clear lack of understanding of humanity's essentially collective and shared existence. We speak because we think, yes, but we more significantly speak because there is someone to talk to.
Let that segue to my other point. To treat the mind as a fundamentally autonomous system that controls through our egocentric intentions our other systems ('I want to raise my arm, so I do' is the irrelevant example he continues to return to), or to see the intent of the individual as basic to the mind's functioning, is to reduce the person to a machine, an automaton, a thing. We now know the un-dividable individual is an abstraction of the Bourgeois era, a hyperbolic gesture to the man who is an island, and not anything that can provide the basis for a theory of human nature and cognitive primacy, raising arms or not.
If you are interested in the philosophy of language or in logic and pragmatics, don't read this book. If you have any knowledge of hermeneutics or phenomenology, then don't read this book. If you think the social is in many ways the telos of the cognitive, don't read this book. But if you want to learn more about how the mind works, then please, don't read this book.
First of all, Searle shares with Chomsky and with most mainstream linguists a certain dogmatic belief. Roughly, this belief is that language is for thinking, and any other reflexes that are enabled by the minds of us rational animals (society, art, religion, economics, law, auto repair, intimacy, family, whatever) are secondary, maybe even wholly derivative and epiphenomenal, to the real purpose, telos, and function of the MIND, which is to stand at the professor's podium and say stuff that sounds good and rational. To suggest that a culture that is expressed by mind(s) and a society that hangs together by mind(s) are solely unintended consequences of the human brain is to admit a clear lack of understanding of humanity's essentially collective and shared existence. We speak because we think, yes, but we more significantly speak because there is someone to talk to.
Let that segue to my other point. To treat the mind as a fundamentally autonomous system that controls through our egocentric intentions our other systems ('I want to raise my arm, so I do' is the irrelevant example he continues to return to), or to see the intent of the individual as basic to the mind's functioning, is to reduce the person to a machine, an automaton, a thing. We now know the un-dividable individual is an abstraction of the Bourgeois era, a hyperbolic gesture to the man who is an island, and not anything that can provide the basis for a theory of human nature and cognitive primacy, raising arms or not.
If you are interested in the philosophy of language or in logic and pragmatics, don't read this book. If you have any knowledge of hermeneutics or phenomenology, then don't read this book. If you think the social is in many ways the telos of the cognitive, don't read this book. But if you want to learn more about how the mind works, then please, don't read this book.
August 25, 2014
Searle's book provides an excellent overview to both the history of the philosophy of mind and the current state of understanding of this important area. His primary concern is the philosophical but he never shies away from describing how our philosophical understanding of the mind has to be aligned with and informed by neurobiological understanding and research.
What I found most refreshing about Searle's approach was his ability to ground his arguments in everyday experience and common sense. He systematically works his way through a sequence of thorny philosophical topics: the mind-body problem; consciousness; causality; free-will; perception; and provides a sound and well-argued framework to understand why these issues have caused such deep debate between philosophers over the years and the gives his own view as to the best resolution.
He is completely candid about where the limits of our current knowledge are and which problems will benefit from more scientific research and which problems need better philosophical research.
I found that in the sections dealing with specifically philosophical arguments, for example the section on Intentionality-with-a-t compared with Intensionality-with-an-s, the philosophical vocabulary made the material dense and opaque, but Searle brings back the topic to concrete examples wherever he can which found helpful.
One aspect of the book that I found a little disappointing was that Searle only touched very lightly on Artificial Intelligence and the possibility of machine-learning and consciousness. Given that he has been so involved in that debate - see The Chinese Room thought-experiment - I had hoped that he might have included more discussion of this important current topic.
Overall, I very much appreciated his style which mixed a comprehensive knowledge of the subject with humor and insight.
What I found most refreshing about Searle's approach was his ability to ground his arguments in everyday experience and common sense. He systematically works his way through a sequence of thorny philosophical topics: the mind-body problem; consciousness; causality; free-will; perception; and provides a sound and well-argued framework to understand why these issues have caused such deep debate between philosophers over the years and the gives his own view as to the best resolution.
He is completely candid about where the limits of our current knowledge are and which problems will benefit from more scientific research and which problems need better philosophical research.
I found that in the sections dealing with specifically philosophical arguments, for example the section on Intentionality-with-a-t compared with Intensionality-with-an-s, the philosophical vocabulary made the material dense and opaque, but Searle brings back the topic to concrete examples wherever he can which found helpful.
One aspect of the book that I found a little disappointing was that Searle only touched very lightly on Artificial Intelligence and the possibility of machine-learning and consciousness. Given that he has been so involved in that debate - see The Chinese Room thought-experiment - I had hoped that he might have included more discussion of this important current topic.
Overall, I very much appreciated his style which mixed a comprehensive knowledge of the subject with humor and insight.
December 20, 2019
The mark of a great thinker is being able to discuss complex issues deeply while using simple language that’s easy to understand. John Searle does that beautifully. He penetrates deeply into the questions in the philosophy of mind, and finds common sense answers to many of them.
He has a tendency, like Aristotle, to reject extremes. He rejects dualism as well as materialism. Dualism is easy to refute, but he goes further and refutes even in the more modern form of “property dualism”. He then turns to materialism in its various types. This is the doctrine that physical particles exist and that all properties must be reducible to these physical particles. In other words, that there are no larger level properties or functions that are not reducible to the level of physical particles. He goes through the types and the problem with them. Then he offers his common sense alternative: that the mind exists with all its functions, that it is material, but not fully reducible. It is brought about by physical properties but the subject experience of it cannot be reduced to those properties.
He then goes on to address various other problems in philosophy of mind, using his simple common sense approach.
Most fascinating is that he gets at the real problems in the enlightenment and in Hume’s philosophy that have impaired further progress in this area. Their problem was that the thought that people can only perceive sensations rather than real entities. Their other problem (particularly hume’s) was that we can only know about atomistic experiences, and not larger entities and processes that are implied by the experiences we have. I was pleasantly surprised to see him endorse perceptual realism - a position I came to after reading David Kelley’s The Evidence of the Senses.
He has a tendency, like Aristotle, to reject extremes. He rejects dualism as well as materialism. Dualism is easy to refute, but he goes further and refutes even in the more modern form of “property dualism”. He then turns to materialism in its various types. This is the doctrine that physical particles exist and that all properties must be reducible to these physical particles. In other words, that there are no larger level properties or functions that are not reducible to the level of physical particles. He goes through the types and the problem with them. Then he offers his common sense alternative: that the mind exists with all its functions, that it is material, but not fully reducible. It is brought about by physical properties but the subject experience of it cannot be reduced to those properties.
He then goes on to address various other problems in philosophy of mind, using his simple common sense approach.
Most fascinating is that he gets at the real problems in the enlightenment and in Hume’s philosophy that have impaired further progress in this area. Their problem was that the thought that people can only perceive sensations rather than real entities. Their other problem (particularly hume’s) was that we can only know about atomistic experiences, and not larger entities and processes that are implied by the experiences we have. I was pleasantly surprised to see him endorse perceptual realism - a position I came to after reading David Kelley’s The Evidence of the Senses.
May 26, 2022
A really good introductory book to the philosophy of mind. Searle's style here is very engaging and beginner friendly. No prior knowledge of philosophy is needed as all the technical jargon is explained in detail. The topics covered in this book include discussion of all the major positions in philosophy of mind (from substance dualism to functionalism), the nature of consciousness and unconsciousness, intentionality, free will, direct vs indirect realism, and personal identity.
Searle's own position, biological naturalism, is a rather unique position in philosophy of mind compared to all the other standard positions. He argues in this book that the traditional distinction between the mental and the physical is outdated and do not adequately describe the world as we know it. Hence, we should revise the distinction between the mental and the physical. From there, he argues that mental phenomena are causally reducible to physical phenomena, but they are not ontologically reducible. Mental phenomena are just higher level features of the brain caused by neurological processes, which are lower level features of the brain. Similar to how the properties of a piece of metal can be causally explained by the properties of its molecules. However, while the macro features are causally explained by the micro features, that doesn't necessarily mean the macro is nothing but the micro. So while Searle doesn't believe in souls or any other immaterial substances, he states we should still treat mental phenomena as ontologically distinct from physical phenomena due to the subjective first-person nature of the former and the objective third-person nature of the latter.
Searle's own position, biological naturalism, is a rather unique position in philosophy of mind compared to all the other standard positions. He argues in this book that the traditional distinction between the mental and the physical is outdated and do not adequately describe the world as we know it. Hence, we should revise the distinction between the mental and the physical. From there, he argues that mental phenomena are causally reducible to physical phenomena, but they are not ontologically reducible. Mental phenomena are just higher level features of the brain caused by neurological processes, which are lower level features of the brain. Similar to how the properties of a piece of metal can be causally explained by the properties of its molecules. However, while the macro features are causally explained by the micro features, that doesn't necessarily mean the macro is nothing but the micro. So while Searle doesn't believe in souls or any other immaterial substances, he states we should still treat mental phenomena as ontologically distinct from physical phenomena due to the subjective first-person nature of the former and the objective third-person nature of the latter.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 20, 2022
Well that read took a while, which wasn't actually my fault - determinism has just caused my neurons to go blank in the face of philosophy of mind.
I really enjoyed the book, Searle certainly seems to have a strong disagreement with most of the theories of consciousness I was familiar with before reading, and even theories on other things later on in the book. This doesn't stop him from painting a nice picture of the theories of consciousness and how many of the components of them work, however. I didn't necessarily find his own theory entirely convincing even though I appreciate his attempt at simplifying a complex issue.
Without writing a C- quality paper on how consciousness works, I'll just say that I learnt a lot, and was given the opportunity to think a lot about how our minds work, and how some of the philosophical problems could be approached and thought about through the endless amount of theories available. The notes feature on Kindle is becoming a great tool to pause and reflect on how you're actually reading things, instead of just gliding past the words on the screen with a surface level of engagement.
At this stage I feel like an epiphonemonalist, my consciousness is surplus to requirements, it lacks mental causation, and "I" am really just watching the end result of my physiological and neurobiological processes play out in real time.
On that note, I can hear my physiological processes calling, it's time to click the post button below...
I really enjoyed the book, Searle certainly seems to have a strong disagreement with most of the theories of consciousness I was familiar with before reading, and even theories on other things later on in the book. This doesn't stop him from painting a nice picture of the theories of consciousness and how many of the components of them work, however. I didn't necessarily find his own theory entirely convincing even though I appreciate his attempt at simplifying a complex issue.
Without writing a C- quality paper on how consciousness works, I'll just say that I learnt a lot, and was given the opportunity to think a lot about how our minds work, and how some of the philosophical problems could be approached and thought about through the endless amount of theories available. The notes feature on Kindle is becoming a great tool to pause and reflect on how you're actually reading things, instead of just gliding past the words on the screen with a surface level of engagement.
At this stage I feel like an epiphonemonalist, my consciousness is surplus to requirements, it lacks mental causation, and "I" am really just watching the end result of my physiological and neurobiological processes play out in real time.
On that note, I can hear my physiological processes calling, it's time to click the post button below...
April 27, 2022
Searle’s “Biological Naturalism” position does not seem to be too different from what most would call “property dualism.” Maybe Searle would prefer the term “aspect dualism” since he has an affinity for that word and a distaste for the traditional vocabulary.
Highly intriguing, informative, most of all clear as can be. Searle has a few arguments which I feel don’t hold up. His argument for the inherent presupposition of direct realism in discourse doesn’t quite hold, because the causal notion of object->representation in the sense-datum theory already assumes that the “noumenon” or “thing-in-itself” causes our representation of an object and that even if these representations have a token difference, they have a type identity because our understanding creates an intelligible gestalt structure from the individual sense perceptions, and, like Searle emphasizes himself, we intuit and understand the spatio-temporal contiguity of objects in the same manner as we do for personal identity.
Overall, fire! Endlessly entertaining to read.
Highly intriguing, informative, most of all clear as can be. Searle has a few arguments which I feel don’t hold up. His argument for the inherent presupposition of direct realism in discourse doesn’t quite hold, because the causal notion of object->representation in the sense-datum theory already assumes that the “noumenon” or “thing-in-itself” causes our representation of an object and that even if these representations have a token difference, they have a type identity because our understanding creates an intelligible gestalt structure from the individual sense perceptions, and, like Searle emphasizes himself, we intuit and understand the spatio-temporal contiguity of objects in the same manner as we do for personal identity.
Overall, fire! Endlessly entertaining to read.
October 24, 2020
I think this is a rather informative overview by Searle, where he highlights mind's uniqueness and the uniqueness of any such attempt at analysis. Here he begins by looking into various existing issues in approaching the philosophy of mind which include materialism, the mind/body problem, explanations on consciousness, intentionality, free will, and mental causation. Searle also considers the place of consciousness in the broader world, where the dualism concept of mind and body being distinct comes into play, and then there being views on materialism including functionalism and his Chinese room argument, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera... Views on mind are complicated and possess great depth, I'll advise those with an interest to read the book, its a good introduction and can be downloaded...
June 2, 2022
هذا الكتاب ليس مجرد مقدمة الى فلسفة العقل ولكنه ايضا دراسة تحليله ونقدية ومنظمة لاهم المشكلات التي تشكل موضوع موضوع هذا الحقل المركزي في الفلسفة عامة. في هذه الدراسة يتجاوز المؤلف المقولات التقليدية المنهج المألوف في معالجة هذه المشكلات ومن اهم الإنجازات التي قدمها جون سيرل في هذا الكتاب تقديم حلول معقولة ومفيدة جدا للمشكلات الصعبة التي ورثناها من ديكارت في بداية القرن السابع عشر .
يكتب المؤلف ويبتدئ هذا الكتاب بشرح ثلاثة أسئلة أساسية في فلسفة العقل يستفسر أولها عن الفرق بين الذاتي او الموضوعي او بين العقلي والماد بينما يتمحور الثاني حول : كيف يمكن للحالات العقلية اللامادية ان توجد في عالم مادي؟ اما الثالث فيتساْل كيف يمكن لحالت عقلية ان تسبب حوادث مادية وكيف يمكن لحوداث مادية ان تسبب حالات عقلية .
يكتب المؤلف ويبتدئ هذا الكتاب بشرح ثلاثة أسئلة أساسية في فلسفة العقل يستفسر أولها عن الفرق بين الذاتي او الموضوعي او بين العقلي والماد بينما يتمحور الثاني حول : كيف يمكن للحالات العقلية اللامادية ان توجد في عالم مادي؟ اما الثالث فيتساْل كيف يمكن لحالت عقلية ان تسبب حوادث مادية وكيف يمكن لحوداث مادية ان تسبب حالات عقلية .
December 5, 2019
¡Qué tema interesante! Me parece central a la hora de discutir muchas otras cosas. Creo que Searle lo agarra más para el lado del lenguaje que es su especialidad y mi aburrimiento. Me llamó la atención que (si no me equivoco) no cita a Damasio en ningún momento. Le haría bien una mirada menos cerebro-centrada. Diría en general que se trata de una mirada desde la filosofía al problema neurocientífico. Se discute sobre posibilidades, eso puede ayudar a expandir la frontera, pero también resulta ambiguo.
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April 23, 2020Stopping at Chapter 4 to potentially be picked up later; Searle starts dipping exclusively into his own theory of mind, which is not really what I want from an introductory PhilMind book. Still, first three chapters are a good history of thought, even if Searle occasionally butts his head in to give his opinion, which isn’t always good (he critiques inferring minds for using argument by analogy but then uses it himself in arguing for animal consciousness, c’mon dude)
July 22, 2020
Excellent. I am reading a lot of philosophy recently and I found his normal language explanations refreshing. Too many philosophers seem to become bogged down in jargon. Whether the intent is to show how much they know, or to obscure what they do not, is not always clear. It seems clear to me that the author is in good command of his material and is honest enough to share with the reader when he is not. Recommended.
November 1, 2020
Very interesting Introduction in the sense that it's scope is primarily the author's accepted, and often quite underdeveloped, theories concerning the parts of discussion.
I understand the "brief" nature of the work may have limited to scope of argumentation, but still so many of the arguments were presented with a sense of assurance and common-sense necessity while being poorly developed or even primarily linguistic.
If nothing else, this work gives a brief summary of Searle's other work in philosophy of mind, and though based on certain phrasings it may seem to be orthogonal to his intention, alleviates you of the need to spend too much time exploring those works..
I understand the "brief" nature of the work may have limited to scope of argumentation, but still so many of the arguments were presented with a sense of assurance and common-sense necessity while being poorly developed or even primarily linguistic.
If nothing else, this work gives a brief summary of Searle's other work in philosophy of mind, and though based on certain phrasings it may seem to be orthogonal to his intention, alleviates you of the need to spend too much time exploring those works..
January 10, 2018
A very readable overview of a selection of philosophical positons. Arguments for or against theories were logical and believable. The author hints to a significant reveal later in the book that is briefer than what I expected based on the hint. An update from the author reflecting latest developments in neurological science and physics would be something I would enjoy.
January 16, 2019
Three stars is probably a biased review because I'm not a huge philosophy fan. There were some interesting ideas, but I think they could have been better covered in a nice list of bullet points or just as proofs.
January 26, 2022
Fantastic book that gives a sweeping survey of philosophical concepts and the approaches of various philosophers, while also showcasing Searle’s own theories through excellent arguments. If you haven’t read anything about these topics before, this is the perfect place to start as Searle structures the book very clearly and writes about these topics in a remarkably engaging way. He doesn’t hold back when giving his own opinions, and is very honest when a topic is a source of uncertainty for him. If you are already familiar with the problems of the mind, please do yourself a favour and read this book. While subtitled as a brief introduction, there is much to be learned from Searle’s approaches to the various ‘problems’ discussed.
June 18, 2022
لا يسرد هذا الكتاب فلسفةً، قدر ما يتفلسف ويحاجج ويدل على منهجيته الفلسفية.ـ
ممتع، وهو مدخل وزيادة.ـ
ورغم أنه لا يعتقد بوجود روح في الإنسان، إلا أني استلطفت تواضعه. إنه يدرك أن العلم لا يفسر كل شيء، وقصاراه -الآن- أن يتناسق مع مخرجات العلم.ـ
الترجمة سيئة، وأخطاء مطبعية كثيرة.ـ
ممتع، وهو مدخل وزيادة.ـ
ورغم أنه لا يعتقد بوجود روح في الإنسان، إلا أني استلطفت تواضعه. إنه يدرك أن العلم لا يفسر كل شيء، وقصاراه -الآن- أن يتناسق مع مخرجات العلم.ـ
الترجمة سيئة، وأخطاء مطبعية كثيرة.ـ
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