John Searle Quotes

John Searle (12)

Birth:	31st July, 1932
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Philosopher

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• Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself.

  John Searle

• Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

  John Searle

• Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.

  John Searle

• 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.

  John Searle

• 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.

  John Searle

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

  John Searle

• In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.

  John Searle

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

  John Searle

• 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.”

  John Searle

• 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.

  John Searle

• An utterance can have Intentionality, just as a belief has Intentionality, but whereas the Intentionality of the belief is intrinsic the Intentionality of the utterance is derived.

  John Searle

• 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.

  John Searle

  Tags in Car