John Searle, 1932-2025

 The philosopher John Searle died at 93. He was an interesting thinker. 

The obituaries mentioned his “Chinese room” argument, an attempt to get people, including students, to see why the kind of things that computers do is not comparable to the kind of things that human minds do. The argument, since it involves artificial intelligence, made a dent in popular culture. But Searle’s work on consciousness was better, I think.

Searle talked and wrote prolifically on the topic. I hope this is a fair summary:

• The problem of consciousness sounds like a scientific problem, but it’s not. It’s a conceptual one.

• Many people, perhaps especially scientists, think “consciousness” is hard to define. It’s not. This will do:

 

Consciousness consists of states of awareness or sentience or feeling.

 

• Consciousness has four salient features:

— Conscious states are qualitative. A conscious state has a certain quality. There is something that it feels like.

— Conscious states are subjective. They are experienced by a subject. They don’t exist independently.

— Conscious states come to us in a unified conscious field, except in pathological cases. I can taste my coffee, be annoyed by a headache and take in the view from the window without having to change channels.

— Conscious states are usually about something. Philosophers call the aboutness “intentional.” (If I’m worried about an exam, the anxiety is conscious — I’m aware of it — and intentional. If I’m anxious but it’s not focused, the anxiety is conscious but not intentional.)

As Searle pointed out, the traditional materialist view of the world can account for none of that. If you treat it as a scientific problem, there’s no place to start.

• Source and notes: John R. Searle, “Consciousness: What We Still Don’t Know”; The New York Review, Jan. 13, 2005.

Searle studied at Oxford with J.L. Austin, who appears often in this collection of notes and was interested in some of the same problems. A good place to start would be “Rowe: J.L. Austin,” Jan. 2, 2024.