Columbia 250 Brain and Mind Symposia By John R. Searle
Biography
John Searle was born in Denver, Colorado, and educated at the universities of Wisconsin and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He holds all of his degrees, BA, MA, and DPhil, from Oxford, and he had his first teaching appointment there as a lecturer at Christ Church. Since 1959, he has been a professor at the University of California in Berkeley, where he holds the chair of Mills Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Language. He has been a visiting professor at a very large number of universities both in the United States and internationally, including the universities of Oxford, Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt, Venice, Rome, Florence, Prague, Graz, Aarhus, Oslo, Campinas, and Lugano. He is the author of 15 books and over 150 articles. His work has been translated into 21 languages.
Professor Searle holds honorary degrees from universities in four different countries. Among his best known books are Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Minds, Brains and Science, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, The Rediscovery of the Mind, The Mystery of Consciousness, The Construction of Social Reality, Rationality in Action, and Consciousness and Language.
Lecture Abstract
At the beginning of the investigation of consciousness, we need to remind ourselves of what we already know.
1. Consciousness, (subjective, qualitative, intentionalistic and unified) really exists as a real part of the biological world. It cannot be eliminated or reduced to something else.
2. All conscious states are caused by lower-level neuronal processes in the brain.
3. Consciousness is realized in the brain as a higher-level or system feature.
4. Consciousness functions causally in producing the behavior of conscious organisms.
Confusions about these four are common and derive from a set of mistaken assumptions. The main sources of the mistakes are the traditional dualistic vocabulary of mental and physical, the ambiguous concept of reduction, the traditional (from Hume) conception of causation and the concept of identity. Once we get over the obstacles created by these confusions, we will not have solved the problem of consciousness, but we will at least have removed some of the major obstacles to its solution.
Brain and Mind Video Archive
