Talk:John Searle
From Academic Kids
I’ve re-worked the content, focusing on the role of intentionality in Searle’s work. I’ve removed the reference to The construction of Social Reality (linked to social construction) and to Ian Hacking because they neither added any information about Searle’s work nor linked to relevant information – apologies to the author. -Banno
Biological naturalism
I agree that Biological naturalism should be mentioned. I hope someone can provide a short description of what it means.
"Biological Naturalism states that consciousness is a higher level function of the brain's physical capabilities. The neurophysiological processes in the brain cause mental phenomena, which are also a feature of the brain. However, such features as consciousness are not reducible to neurophysiological systems." (source (http://web.psych.ualberta.ca/~mike/Pearl_Street/Dictionary/contents/B/biological_naturalism.html))
Given my understanding of reducible this (above) description of Biological Naturalism makes no sense to me. I think Searle has a special definition for "reducible" that needs to be stated explicitly. JWSchmidt 18:48, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Construction of social reality
Removed from article:
The above is not a very good example of a social construct, as a five dollar bill has the economic guarantee of a third force (The United States Government), therefore it does not rely simply upon the agreement of two parties, but rather upon the real economic integrity of a government's ability to back up its tender. Whether the second party believes a five-dollar bill to be a five-dollar bill is immaterial to the five-dollar bill's value.
Stronger examples of social construction would be the values of antiques, collectors' items, name-brand goods, or fetishized commodities, which rely upon a covenant of agreed value between two parties.
This note appears to be an opinion, and so should have been placed in talk, rather than the main article. It also shows how inadequate the section on the social construction of reality is, since it appears to contain a basic misunderstanding. The role of a nation’s government is irrelevant to the sort of social construct Searle is discussing – they are simply another party to the convention of calling certain pieces of paper money; The phrase 'real economic integrity' is telling – what the hell could 'real economic integrity' be, without a shared intentionality? As is 'Whether the second party believes a five-dollar bill to be a five-dollar bill is immaterial to the five-dollar bill's value'. No second party will use such a bill in a transaction unless they believe it has value, and furthermore, if they do not believe it has value, then ipso facto it does not have value. That the note has any value at all is a matter of shared intentionality, not economic integrity. Any economic integrity derives from that same shared intentionality.
I’ll put a re-write on my ‘’to do’’ list, but it might take a while… Banno 22:53, May 22, 2004 (UTC)
Unified Field Theories of Consciousness
Searle has been a strong proponent of unified field theories of consciousness (See "Consciousness" - Annu Rev Neurosci. 2000;23:557-78), and I think he's exerted some influence on the neuroscience community in this regard. Yet, I don't find anything related to unified field theories of consciousness on his page. Is there a reason, or is this something that maybe I should think about adding? Cerebral 02:31, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
I noticed that some sites give his date of birth as July 31, 1932. Since that's more precise that what we've got now, I'm inclined to think it might be correct, but I don't know, so I didn't change it. I'm also not quite sure if the middle name is "Rogers" or "Roger". Everyking 05:40, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
What an awful photograph, he looks like he just got out of bed after having been kept up all night with a cold. Does he look like that normally? If not, is there a more appropriate picture for him that could be used? -mqbs Oct 25 23:43:20 EDT 2004
- That's what he looks like in person, at least when I saw him (I took the picture). In his "official photos", those which are not from the 1970s, he is done up a bit more. But I've never seen any of those that could be released under the Wikipedia license. --Fastfission 02:50, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
