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John Searle

American philosopher (1932–2025)

This article is about the American philosopher. For other people with the same name, see John Searle (disambiguation).

John Searle

[[File:John Searle Christ Church Oxford 2005.jpg|thumb|Searle at Christ Church, Oxford, 2005]] Born John Rogers Searle (1932-07-31)July 31, 1932 Denver, Colorado, U.S. Died September 17, 2025(2025-09-17) (aged 93) Safety Harbor, Florida, U.S. Spouse Dagmar Carboch ​(m.  1958; died 2017) ​[3][4] Children 2 Education • Alma mater University of Wisconsin–Madison Christ Church, Oxford • Thesis Problems arising in the theory of meaning out of the notions of sense and reference  (1959) • Academic advisors Peter Strawson J. L. Austin Philosophical work • Era Contemporary philosophy • Region Western philosophy • School Analytic Direct realism [1] • Institutions Christ Church, Oxford UC Berkeley • Doctoral students Bence Nanay [2] • Notable students William Hirstein Main interests • Philosophy of language • Philosophy of mind • Intentionality · Social ontology · Social reality Notable ideas • Indirect speech acts • Chinese room • Biological naturalism • Direction of fit Signature [[File:John R Searle signature.svg|120px]]

John Rogers Searle (/sɜːrl/ ⓘ ; July 31, 1932 – September 17, 2025) was an American philosopher whose work made significant, and often contentious, contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. His academic journey began at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1959, where he eventually held the esteemed position of Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Language and Professor of the Graduate School. This tenure, however, concluded abruptly in June 2019, when his status as professor emeritus was formally revoked following an institutional finding that he had violated the university's sexual harassment policies [5]. A rather predictable end, some might say, for a career marked by both intellectual brilliance and controversial pronouncements.

Before his long tenure at Berkeley, Searle's foundational years as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison saw him engaged in political activism, serving as secretary for "Students against Joseph McCarthy" during a tense period in American history. He pursued all his higher education degrees—a BA, MA, and DPhil—at the prestigious University of Oxford, where he also secured his initial faculty appointments. Upon joining UC Berkeley, Searle cemented his reputation for intellectual and political engagement by becoming the first tenured professor to lend his support to the seminal 1964–1965 Free Speech Movement. Decades later, in the late 1980s, Searle found himself embroiled in another public dispute, this time challenging the strictures of Berkeley's 1980 rent stabilization ordinance. This legal challenge ultimately led to what became known as the California Supreme Court's "Searle Decision" in 1990, a ruling that prompted Berkeley to revise its rent control policy, resulting in substantial rent increases for many tenants between 1991 and 1994.

Throughout his career, despite the controversies that often swirled around him, Searle was recognized with several significant accolades. In 2000, he was awarded the distinguished Jean Nicod Prize [6]. The National Humanities Medal followed in 2004 [7], and in 2006, he received the Mind & Brain Prize. Further cementing his place in the intellectual landscape, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2010 [8]. Searle's early scholarship on speech acts, a body of work significantly influenced by the analytical traditions of J. L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein, was instrumental in establishing his early reputation in the philosophical community. However, perhaps his most enduring, and certainly his most widely debated, philosophical contribution remains the "Chinese room" argument. This thought experiment, presented with characteristic clarity, aimed to definitively refute the core tenet of what he termed "strong" artificial intelligence, a thesis that continues to provoke vigorous debate among philosophers and AI researchers alike.

Early life and education

[[File:John Searle Google 2015 (cropped).jpg|thumb|John Searle speaking at Google, 2015]]

John Searle entered the world in Denver on July 31, 1932 [9][4]. His familial background was one of intellectual and professional rigor; his father, G. W. Searle, was an accomplished electrical engineer working for the then-ubiquitous AT&T Corporation, while his mother, Hester Beck Searle, pursued a career as a physician [9]. One might infer that a household steeped in both precise engineering and the complexities of human biology provided fertile ground for a mind that would later grapple with the mechanisms of language and consciousness.

He embarked on his higher education journey at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. It was during his junior year there that his academic promise was recognized with the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, an honor that transported him across the Atlantic to the venerable halls of the University of Oxford. At Oxford, he completed all his subsequent university degrees, meticulously earning his BA, MA, and DPhil [9][10]. This traditional, rigorous academic path undeniably shaped his analytical approach to philosophy, grounding him in the traditions he would later both build upon and, at times, sharply criticize.

Philosophical work

Speech acts

Searle’s initial forays into the philosophical arena, which, as noted, were instrumental in cementing his early intellectual standing, centered squarely on the theory of speech acts. His ambition was to weave together disparate, yet complementary, strands of thought from a constellation of influential thinkers. He drew heavily from J. L. Austin, particularly Austin’s concept of the "illocutionary act" as articulated in How To Do Things with Words. From both Ludwig Wittgenstein and G. C. J. Midgley, he adopted and refined the crucial distinction between regulative and constitutive rules – a distinction that would become a cornerstone of his own work, positing that speech acts themselves are fundamentally constituted by the underlying rules of language. Further contributions were assimilated from Paul Grice, whose analysis of meaning as a speaker's attempt to be understood resonated with Searle's framework. He also incorporated insights from Hare and Stenius regarding the differentiation between illocutionary force and propositional content in meaning, and from P. F. Strawson, John Rawls, and William Alston. These various influences converged into Searle’s central thesis: that sentence meaning is comprised of sets of regulative rules which necessitate a speaker to perform the illocutionary act indicated by the sentence, and that such acts invariably involve uttering a sentence that (a) explicitly signals the performance of the act; (b) conveys precisely what the speaker intends to say; and (c) is directed towards an identifiable audience within the immediate context [11]. It's a rather intricate dance, this act of communication, isn't it?

In his groundbreaking 1969 monograph, Speech Acts, Searle meticulously articulated this synthesis, presenting his comprehensive account of illocutionary acts. Within this work, he provided an exhaustive analysis of what he considered the quintessential illocutionary act: promising. He then proceeded to offer systematic sets of semantical rules, designed to precisely represent the linguistic meaning of various devices that signal other types of illocutionary acts. A key conceptual innovation introduced in the book was the vital distinction between the "illocutionary force" and the "propositional content" of an utterance. While Searle deliberately refrained from offering a rigid definition of illocutionary force, he effectively illustrated its various manifestations through a series of illustrative examples. Consider, for instance, the following sentences:

  • Sam smokes habitually.
  • Does Sam smoke habitually?
  • Sam, smoke habitually!
  • Would that Sam smoked habitually!

According to Searle, each of these utterances conveys the identical propositional content—namely, "Sam smoking habitually." However, they diverge dramatically in their indicated illocutionary force, representing, respectively, a straightforward statement, a direct question, a command, and an expression of desire [12]. The same core idea, wrapped in different intentions, performs entirely different functions in the world.

A later, refined articulation of his theory, presented in Intentionality (1983)—which diverged in several significant aspects from the framework proposed in Speech Acts—characterized illocutionary acts by two primary features: "conditions of satisfaction" and a "direction of fit". The concept of "conditions of satisfaction" was an idea he explicitly adopted from Strawson's 1971 paper "Meaning and Truth," while the notion of a "direction of fit" found its origins in the work of Austin and Elizabeth Anscombe. To illustrate, consider the statement, "John bought two candy bars." This statement is "satisfied" if, and only if, it corresponds to a true state of affairs – that is, if John did indeed purchase two candy bars. Conversely, the command, "John, buy two candy bars!" is "satisfied" if, and only if, John performs the action of purchasing two candy bars. Searle meticulously labeled the former as possessing a "word-to-world" direction of fit, signifying that the linguistic expression is intended to accurately reflect or change to match an existing state of affairs in the world. The latter, by contrast, exhibits a "world-to-word" direction of fit, meaning the world itself is expected to alter to conform to the dictates of the words. Beyond these two primary directions, Searle also identified a "double direction of fit," where the relationship operates reciprocally, and a "null or zero direction of fit." This latter category applies when the propositional content is not asserted but rather presupposed, as exemplified by the utterance "I am sorry I ate John's candy bars." In this instance, the apology presupposes the act of eating the candy bars, rather than asserting it as a new fact or commanding it to happen. It's a rather neat way to categorize the myriad ways our words interact with reality, even if it feels like formalizing the obvious.

In Foundations of Illocutionary Logic [13] (1985), co-authored with Daniel Vanderveken, Searle further elaborated on his theoretical framework, prominently utilizing the concept of the "illocutionary point" [14]. This notion, though not explicitly attributed by Searle, traces its origins to Alexander Sesonske's earlier article, "Performatives," demonstrating that even the most innovative thinkers stand on the shoulders of giants, whether acknowledged or not.

Unsurprisingly, Searle's comprehensive speech-act theory has not been immune to critical scrutiny and challenges from a diverse array of thinkers. Collections of scholarly articles dedicated to dissecting and critiquing Searle's account can be found in volumes such as Burkhardt 1990 [15] and Lepore / van Gulick 1991 [16], demonstrating the fertile ground for intellectual disagreement that his work consistently provided.

Intentionality and the background

In his seminal 1983 work, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, Searle adeptly extended the rigorous principles developed in his account(s) of illocutionary acts to meticulously investigate the phenomenon of intentionality. This concept, for Searle, stood as the very core of his "Philosophy of Mind." He was, it must be noted, painstakingly careful to draw a sharp distinction between 'intentionality'—defined as the inherent capacity of mental states to be about or directed towards objects and states of affairs in the external world—and 'intensionality,' a more technical linguistic term referring to the referential opacity found in contexts that resist tests for 'extensionality' [17]. One can almost hear the exasperation in his voice when clarifying such distinctions; philosophers, after all, do love their precise, often confusing, terminology.

For Searle, intentionality is an exclusively mental phenomenon, representing the unique power of minds to represent or symbolize objects, properties, and various states of affairs that exist in the external world [18]. It's more than mere correlation or "about-ness"; causal covariance alone is insufficient. Maps, for instance, possess only a 'derived' intentionality—a mere echo, an after-image, of the genuine article. They are "about" a territory only because a conscious mind intends them to be so. Without that underlying mental act, they are just ink on paper, devoid of inherent meaning.

Searle also introduced a rather significant and, for some, vexing technical term: the Background [19]. This concept, he acknowledged, had been the source of considerable philosophical debate, a point he underscored by noting, "though I have been arguing for this thesis for almost twenty years, many people whose opinions I respect still disagree with me about it" [20]. The Background, as Searle defined it, is not itself a collection of intentional states, but rather a vast reservoir of pre-intentional abilities, capacities, tendencies, and dispositions that humans possess. These unconscious capacities are what enable us to generate appropriate intentional states on demand.

To offer a clearer illustration, consider a simple request like "cut the cake." Anyone hearing this command instinctively knows to employ a knife. Contrast this with the instruction "cut the grass," which immediately brings to mind a lawnmower, and certainly not the cake knife. The request itself did not explicitly state the specific tool to be used, yet the appropriate interpretation arises effortlessly. One could, of course, conjure an endless series of skeptical, anti-real, or science-fiction scenarios where these interpretations are reversed, or where a cake is cut with a lawnmower, but such scenarios only highlight the radical underdetermination of meaning by literal language. "I wish to say that there is a radical underdetermination of what is said by the literal meaning," Searle emphasized [21]. It is the Background that seamlessly fills this interpretive void, ensuring that a suitable interpretation is always readily available. As he somewhat dismissively put it, "I just take a huge metaphysics for granted" [22]. Searle often augmented his discussion of the Background with the related concept of the Network, which refers to one's interconnected web of other beliefs, desires, and various intentional states that are indispensable for any particular intentional state to acquire coherence and make sense.

Consider, for example, two individuals locked in a fierce game of chess. While their explicit intentional states are focused on strategic moves and capturing pieces, they implicitly share a vast array of Background presuppositions. They take for granted that they will take turns, that no external party will interfere, that both are adhering to the same rules, that the fire alarm will not suddenly blare, that the chessboard will not spontaneously disintegrate, and, rather absurdly, that their opponent will not miraculously transform into a grapefruit. The list of such unstated assumptions is practically infinite. Since most of these possibilities never consciously cross either player's mind, Searle posited that the Background itself operates at an unconscious level, and is inherently nonintentional [23]. To possess a Background, in this view, is to have a complex set of brain structures that are capable of generating appropriate intentional states should the need arise (e.g., if the fire alarm does go off). He clarified, "Those brain structures enable me to activate the system of intentionality and to make it function, but the capacities realized in the brain structures do not themselves consist in intentional states" [24]. It is a fundamental, biological scaffolding upon which all conscious intentionality is built.

Searle believed that both Hume and Nietzsche were perhaps the first philosophers to truly grasp, respectively, the profound centrality and the inherent, radical contingency of this Background. "Nietzsche saw, with anxiety, that the Background does not have to be the way it is," Searle observed [25]. He also contended that the concept of a Background resonated deeply with ideas found in other modern thinkers: it mirrored the "river-bed" or "substratum" described in Wittgenstein's On Certainty [26] ("the work of the later Wittgenstein is in large part about the Background, especially On Certainty " [27]), and exhibited parallels with Pierre Bourdieu's sociological concept of the habitus.

In the course of his well-known debate with Jacques Derrida, Searle vehemently argued against Derrida's asserted view that a statement could be legitimately severed from the original intentionality of its author—for instance, when a text is no longer connected to its original creator—while still retaining its capacity to produce meaning. Searle maintained that even in a scenario where one encountered a written statement with no knowledge whatsoever of its authorship, it would remain fundamentally impossible to escape the inherent question of intentionality. His reasoning was clear: "a meaningful sentence is just a standing possibility of the (intentional) speech act" [28]. For Searle, the very act of attributing intentionality to a statement was an absolute prerequisite for assigning it any meaning at all [29]. The idea that words could float free of intent and still mean something seemed, to him, a fundamental misunderstanding of how language actually functions.

More recently, in 2023, Pierre Jacob somewhat counter-intuitively described Searle's view as "anti-intentionalist" [30], a characterization that, depending on one's interpretation of Searle's intricate philosophical framework, could either be seen as a profound insight or a rather glaring misreading.

Consciousness

Building upon the intricate architecture of his views concerning intentionality, Searle presented a compelling and often provocative perspective on consciousness in his 1992 book, The Rediscovery of the Mind. He argued with characteristic force that, beginning with behaviorism—an early but immensely influential scientific paradigm—and perpetuated by numerous subsequent theories which Searle, with visible dismissal, also rejected, much of modern philosophy had embarked on a futile endeavor to deny the very existence of consciousness. This denial, he contended, met with predictably little success, largely because it flew in the face of direct, undeniable experience. In Intentionality, he employed a rather pointed, almost sarcastic, parody of several alternative theories of consciousness by substituting their convoluted accounts of intentionality with equally absurd, yet comparable, accounts of the human hand:

"No one would think of saying, for example, 'Having a hand is just being disposed to certain sorts of behavior such as grasping' (manual behaviorism), or 'Hands can be defined entirely in terms of their causes and effects' (manual functionalism), or 'For a system to have a hand is just for it to be in a certain computer state with the right sorts of inputs and outputs' (manual Turing machine functionalism), or 'Saying that a system has hands is just adopting a certain stance toward it' (the manual stance)" (p. 263).

Searle's underlying argument was that philosophy had become ensnared by a pernicious false dichotomy. On one side, there was the prevailing scientific worldview asserting that the universe consists of nothing more than objective particles moving within fields of force. On the other, there was the undeniable, self-evident truth that consciousness is, unequivocally, a subjective, first-person experience. Searle, with a refreshing lack of pretense, declared that both assertions are simply true: consciousness is a genuine, irreducible subjective experience, and it is demonstrably caused by the physical, biological processes occurring within the brain. This straightforward, yet profound, assertion forms a central pillar of his theory of biological naturalism. It's almost too simple for some philosophers to accept, isn't it?

Ontological subjectivity

Searle argued [31] that critics—such as Daniel Dennett [32], whom Searle claimed erroneously insisted that any discussion of subjectivity was inherently unscientific because science, by its very nature, presupposes objectivity—were committing a fundamental category error. The ultimate goal of scientific inquiry, he conceded, is indeed to establish and rigorously validate statements that are epistemically objective—that is, statements whose truth can be discovered, verified, and evaluated by any interested and competent observer, regardless of their personal biases. However, this does not, he stressed, imply that the phenomena being studied are necessarily ontologically objective.

Searle meticulously defined any value judgment as epistemically subjective. For example, the statement, "McKinley is prettier than Everest" is definitively "epistemically subjective" because its truth value depends entirely on individual aesthetic preference and cannot be universally validated. Conversely, the statement, "McKinley is higher than Everest" is "epistemically objective." This latter assertion is not only evaluable but, in fact, falsifiable, by an agreed-upon (and often "background") criterion for mountain height, such as "the summit is so many meters above sea level." No such universally accepted, objective criteria exist for judgments of prettiness.

Beyond this crucial distinction, Searle posited that there exist certain phenomena, encompassing all conscious experiences, that are inherently ontologically subjective. These phenomena, by their very nature, can only exist as subjective experience. For instance, while a doctor's diagnosis that a patient is suffering from back pain might be an epistemically objective claim—it qualifies as a medical diagnosis because the existence of back pain is considered "an objective fact of medical science" [33]—the pain itself, however, is irreducibly ontologically subjective. It is, quite simply, only experienced by the individual who is having it. To argue otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of pain, or indeed, any conscious experience.

Searle further affirmed that, "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality" [34]. This assertion is pivotal to his self-proclaimed biological naturalism, as it allows for epistemically objective judgments—such as "That object is a pocket calculator"—to effectively identify agent-relative features of objects. Such features, by Searle's definition, are ontologically subjective, in stark contrast to, say, the statement, "That object is made mostly of plastic," which describes an ontologically objective property independent of human perspective. It’s a subtle but critical distinction, often lost on those who prefer a simpler, less messy reality.

Artificial intelligence

Searle's theory of biological naturalism carries a profound implication for the realm of artificial intelligence: if humanity ever truly wishes to engineer a conscious being, it will necessitate the replication of the precise physical processes that the human brain undergoes to generate consciousness. This position stands in direct opposition to what Searle famously termed "Strong AI", a thesis he characterized by the assumption that "the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind, in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to understand and have other cognitive states" [35]. It's a rather audacious claim, that mere programming could conjure a mind from silicon.

In 1980, Searle introduced what has become arguably his most celebrated and contentious argument: the "Chinese room" thought experiment. This ingenious scenario was designed to provide a definitive refutation of the core tenets of strong AI [35]. Imagine, if you will, a person enclosed within a room, equipped with two slits, a comprehensive instruction book, and a stack of scratch paper. This individual, crucially, possesses no knowledge whatsoever of the Chinese language. Someone outside the room slides a set of Chinese characters through the first slit. The person inside, acting solely as a processor, meticulously follows the instructions laid out in the book, transcribing the characters as directed onto the scratch paper, and then slides the resulting sheet out through the second slit. To any external observer, the "room" appears to comprehend Chinese—Chinese statements are inputted, and seemingly valid, coherent responses in English are returned. Yet, the person inside the room, and by extension the "room" itself, understands not a single word of Chinese. This, Searle contended, demonstrates that no computer, however sophisticated its programming, can ever genuinely "understand" Chinese or English. The thought experiment vividly illustrates that merely being capable of 'translating' Chinese into English does not equate to 'understanding' either language; all that the person in the room—and thus, by analogy, a computer—is capable of performing are purely syntactic manipulations, devoid of any semantic comprehension [36][37]. And yet, people still argue the point.

The "Chinese room" argument, like much of Searle's work, did not go unchallenged. Prominent critics such as Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, in their collaborative work The Mind's I, offered detailed critiques of Searle's perspective on AI, specifically targeting the Chinese room argument [38], finding its conclusions less than convincing.

Stevan Harnad further posited that Searle's designation of "Strong AI" is, in essence, merely a re-labeling of the philosophical positions of functionalism and computationalism. He argued that these underlying philosophical frameworks are the true targets of Searle's incisive critique [39]. Functionalists, for their part, often argue that consciousness can be exhaustively defined as a specific set of informational processes occurring within the brain. From this premise, it logically follows that any system, regardless of its physical composition, that executes these identical informational processes would also be considered conscious. Thus, if human engineers were to successfully create a computer program capable of consciousness, they could, theoretically, run that very program on a system constructed from something as mundane as ping-pong balls and beer cups, and that rudimentary system would, in principle, be equally conscious, simply because it was running the same informational processes. It’s a rather charmingly absurd image, isn't it?

Searle, however, argued vehemently that such a scenario is fundamentally impossible. He maintained that consciousness is an emergent physical property of biological brains, akin to digestion or fire. No matter how meticulously one constructs a computer simulation of digestion, that simulation will not, in fact, digest anything. Similarly, no matter how perfectly a computer simulates fire, nothing in its virtual world will actually be burnt. Informational processes, by contrast, are, in Searle’s view, observer-relative: human observers identify and interpret specific patterns in the world as "information processes," but these processes do not possess an independent, objective existence as "things-in-the-world" themselves. Since they lack this fundamental physical existence, Searle contended, they cannot possess causal efficacy; therefore, they cannot, by themselves, cause consciousness. There exists no underlying physical law, Searle insisted, that could establish an equivalence between a personal computer, a system of ping-pong balls and beer cans, and a complex pipe-and-water network, simply because they all purportedly implement the same abstract program [40]. The medium, in this case, is far more than just the message.

Social reality

Searle characteristically broadened the scope of his philosophical investigations beyond the individual mind, extending his inquiries into the realm of observer-relative phenomena by endeavoring to comprehend the very fabric of social reality. He commenced this ambitious undertaking by positing that collective intentionality—manifested in shared intentions such as "we are going for a walk"—constitutes a distinct and irreducible form of intentionality. It is not, he argued, merely reducible to a complex aggregation of individual intentional states (ee.g., "I am going for a walk with him, and I think he thinks he is going for a walk with me, and he thinks I think I am going for a walk with him, and so on, ad infinitum"). The "we" is a fundamental ontological category, not just a shorthand for a collection of "I"s.

In his influential 1995 work, The Construction of Social Reality, Searle grappled with the profound enigma of how seemingly intangible social constructs—such as the rules of "baseball" or the concept of "money"—can possibly exist within a universe ultimately composed solely of physical particles operating within fields of force. Drawing inspiration from an insightful idea advanced by Elizabeth Anscombe in her paper "On Brute Facts," Searle carefully distinguished between brute facts, which exist independently of human institutions (such as the undeniable height of a mountain), and institutional facts, which are entirely dependent on human agreement and social structures (such as the score of a baseball game). Aiming to provide a comprehensive explanation of social phenomena through the lens of Anscombe's distinction, he argued that the intricate tapestry of society can be elucidated by understanding institutional facts. These institutional facts, in turn, arise from the bedrock of collective intentionality, instantiated through constitutive rules that invariably take the logical form "X counts as Y in C."

To elaborate, consider a series of such constitutive rules: the physical act of marking a paper in a designated booth "counts as" a vote in the context of a polling place. The accumulation of a certain number of these "votes" "counts as" a victory in the context of an election. Achieving such a "victory" then "counts as" being elected president within the context of the presidential race, and so forth. This framework, Searle contended, allows us to understand how seemingly arbitrary human conventions acquire profound meaning and causal efficacy within our social world.

However, not all within the sociological community readily embraced Searle's contributions to social theory as particularly groundbreaking. Neil Gross, for example, argued persuasively that Searle's views on society were, to a considerable extent, a re-articulation—perhaps even an unwitting one—of the theories of the seminal sociologist Émile Durkheim, encompassing Durkheim's concepts of social facts, social institutions, collective representations, and similar constructs [41]. Consequently, Gross suggested, Searle's ideas were susceptible to many of the same criticisms that had historically been leveled against Durkheim's work. Searle, with characteristic bluntness, responded by admitting he had not extensively read Durkheim's work, stating rather dismissively, "Because Durkheim's account seemed so impoverished I did not read any further in his work" [42]. This stance, predictably, did not sit well with Durkheim scholars. Steven Lukes, in a direct rejoinder to Searle's response to Gross, meticulously argued point by point against Searle's allegations regarding Durkheim, essentially upholding Gross's original argument that Searle's theoretical framework bore a striking resemblance to Durkheim's. Lukes attributed Searle's apparent miscomprehension of Durkheim's substantial body of work to the simple, yet profound, fact that Searle had, by his own admission, never genuinely engaged with it [43]. An unfortunate oversight, perhaps, when venturing into another discipline's well-trodden paths.

Searle–Lawson debate

In more recent years, Searle's primary intellectual sparring partner on the intricate issues of social ontology has been the economist and philosopher Tony Lawson. While their respective accounts of social reality exhibit certain undeniable similarities, crucial distinctions remain at the heart of their ongoing debate. Lawson, for his part, places significant emphasis on the holistic notion of social totality, advocating for an understanding of society as an integrated whole, whereas Searle tends to privilege the analytical focus on individual institutional facts and their constitutive rules.

A further point of divergence lies in their understanding of emergence. Searle generally held that emergence, particularly in the social realm, implies a form of causal reduction—that the properties of the whole are ultimately explicable by the causal powers of its constituent parts. Lawson, conversely, contended that social totalities cannot be fully or exhaustively explained by merely summing the causal powers of their components, arguing for a stronger, non-reductive form of emergence where the whole possesses properties not present in its parts [44][45]. Moreover, Searle consistently posited language as the fundamental bedrock upon which the construction of social reality rests. Lawson, however, advanced the argument that community formation necessarily precedes the full development of language, thereby implying the possibility, indeed the necessity, of non-linguistic social structure formation [46]. This is an ongoing and rather vigorous debate, actively conducted through regular meetings of the Centre for Social Ontology at the University of California, Berkeley and the Cambridge Social Ontology Group at the University of Cambridge [47], proving that philosophers, like tectonic plates, continue to shift and grind against one another, even when ostensibly in agreement.

Rationality

In his 2001 work, Rationality in Action, Searle launched a direct assault on what he perceived as the deeply flawed standard notions of rationality, particularly those encapsulated in what he dubbed the "Classical Model." This model, he argued, envisions rationality as an unyielding, linear train track: an individual boards this track at a specific point, armed with their beliefs and desires, and is then inexorably propelled by the immutable rules of rationality all the way to a predetermined, logical conclusion. Searle, with his characteristic skepticism, expressed profound doubt that this simplistic, mechanistic portrayal of rationality accurately reflects the complexities of human decision-making. It’s a nice thought, a perfectly logical human, but ultimately a fiction.

He offered a brief, yet incisive, critique of one particular subset of these rules: those underpinning mathematical decision theory. Searle pointed out that the very axioms of this theory would, absurdly, require any individual who valued both a mere quarter and their own life to, at certain odds, gamble their life for that quarter. Searle, with a perfectly rational disdain, insisted he would never entertain such a preposterous bet, and moreover, believed his unwavering refusal to be entirely rational. This, he argued, exposed a fundamental disconnect between formal models and lived human experience.

The bulk of his critique, however, was aimed at the prevailing common conception of rationality, which he considered fundamentally flawed in several key respects.

Firstly, Searle argued that reason, contrary to popular belief, does not cause an individual to do anything. Rather, having a sufficient reason merely wills, but does not force, them to undertake a particular action. Consequently, in virtually any decision-making scenario, individuals experience an inherent "gap" between their reasons and their subsequent actions. For instance, when a person resolves to vote, they may meticulously determine that their primary concern is economic policy and that candidate Jones's economic platform aligns best with their views. Yet, a conscious effort is still required to physically cast that vote. Similarly, every time a smoker, laden with guilt, lights another cigarette, they are acutely aware that they are succumbing to an immediate craving, rather than acting as a mere automaton, as they might when simply exhaling. This undeniable "gap," Searle contended, is precisely what gives humans the profound subjective experience of having free will. While Searle admitted that the question of whether humans genuinely possess free will remains an open philosophical inquiry, he considered its absence to be a deeply unappealing prospect. The idea that the feeling of freedom of will could be a mere epiphenomenon—a byproduct with no causal power—struck him as highly improbable from an evolutionary standpoint, given its considerable biological cost. He asserted, rather unequivocally, that "All rational activity presupposes free will" [48].

Secondly, Searle challenged the widely held philosophical dogma that one cannot derive an "ought" from an "is"—that is, that factual statements about the state of the world can never logically dictate what a person should do, a principle famously known as Hume's Law. Searle countered this by arguing that insofar as a fact is understood to relate to an institution (such as marriage, promises, or commitments), which is itself understood as a system of constitutive rules, then what one should do can indeed be understood as logically following from the institutional fact of what one has already done. Thus, an institutional fact, in this context, stands in opposition to the "brute facts" that fall under the purview of Hume's Law. For example, Searle maintained that the act of promising to do something inherently creates an obligation to do it. By making the promise, one actively participates in, and thereby binds oneself to, the constitutive rules that define the very system of promise-making. A distinct "shouldness" is, therefore, implicitly contained within the mere factual action of uttering a promise. Furthermore, he argued that this framework provides desire-independent reasons for action; if one orders a drink at a bar, there arises an obligation to pay for it, regardless of whether one desires to do so. This argument, first articulated in his 1964 paper, "How to Derive 'Ought' from 'Is'" [49], remains a subject of intense philosophical controversy. Nevertheless, Searle steadfastly maintained that "the traditional metaphysical distinction between fact and value cannot be captured by the linguistic distinction between 'evaluative' and 'descriptive' because all such speech act notions are already normative" [50]. The lines are far blurrier than some would like to admit.

Thirdly, Searle contended that a significant portion of rational deliberation involves the dynamic process of adjusting and prioritizing one's often inconsistent patterns of desires to make choices between potential outcomes, rather than the reverse. Under the Classical Model, an individual might begin by prioritizing a desire to travel to Paris over the desire to save money, which would then logically lead to calculating the most economical way to reach Paris. Searle, however, would argue that people actively balance the desire for a Parisian adventure against the desire for financial prudence, and through this process, they determine which desire they value more in that specific context. Hence, he concluded that rationality is not a rigid system of pre-existing rules to be followed, but rather functions more like an adverb, describing how certain behaviors are carried out. Certain actions and decisions are recognized as rational, irrespective of their originating source, and any system of rules purporting to define rationality is merely derived from observing and identifying patterns in what is already considered rational behavior. It's an observation, not a decree.

Searle–Derrida debate

The intellectual skirmish between John Searle and Jacques Derrida, a battle of titans that played out in the academic journals, stands as a notable episode in 20th-century philosophy. The debate ignited after Derrida, in his influential 1972 paper "Signature Event Context," offered a critical response to J. L. Austin's seminal theory of the illocutionary act. Searle, perceiving Derrida's critique as a fundamental misunderstanding and an unwarranted rejection of Austin's insights, published his own forceful counter-argument in 1977, titled "Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida."

The controversy further escalated when Searle famously refused to permit his 1977 reply to be reprinted alongside Derrida's subsequent papers in the 1988 collection Limited Inc—a volume that included a new text by Derrida explicitly attacking Searle's positions on the very same topic. This refusal only served to underscore the depth of the intellectual chasm between the two. In the 1990s, Searle continued to articulate his reasons for not considering Derrida's philosophical approach to be legitimate, often dismissing it as obscure and lacking the clarity and rigor he believed essential to serious philosophy. It was, for Searle, a matter of intellectual hygiene, a refusal to engage with what he saw as an unproductive departure from meaningful philosophical inquiry.

Political activity

John Searle's intellectual prowess was often matched by a willingness to engage directly in political and social issues, a trait evident from his earliest academic days. While pursuing his undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Searle actively participated in the political landscape, serving as the secretary of "Students against Joseph McCarthy" [51]. This early involvement placed him squarely in opposition to the controversial junior senator from Wisconsin during the height of the McCarthy era, signaling a lifelong inclination to confront perceived injustices.

Upon commencing his teaching career at Berkeley in 1959, Searle quickly established himself as a figure willing to take a public stand. He notably became the first tenured professor to openly join and support the momentous 1964–65 Free Speech Movement [52], a pivotal moment in American higher education that challenged established authority and championed student rights. However, his political stances were not always aligned with the student movements of the era. In 1969, while serving as chairman of the Academic Freedom Committee of the Academic Senate of the University of California [53], Searle controversially sided with the university administration in its heated dispute with students over the fate of People's Park, a conflict that became a flashpoint for counterculture protests.

In his 1971 book, The Campus War: A Sympathetic Look at the University in Agony [54], Searle offered his analysis of the underlying causes driving the widespread campus protests of that tumultuous era. In this work, he famously declared, "I have been attacked by both the House Un-American Activities Committee and ... by several radical polemicists.... Stylistically, the attacks are interestingly similar. Both rely heavily on insinuation and innuendo, and both display a hatred — one might almost say terror — of close analysis and dissection of argument." This statement, with its characteristic blend of self-defense and intellectual critique, perfectly encapsulates Searle's persona. He further revealed the intensity of the period by asserting that "My wife was threatened that I (and other members of the administration) would be assassinated or violently attacked" [51], illustrating the very real dangers faced by those caught in the crossfire of ideological conflict.

In the late 1980s, Searle once again found himself at the center of a public controversy, this time pertaining to property rights. Alongside other landlords in Berkeley, he submitted a petition to the city's rental board, seeking to increase the limits on what he could charge his tenants under the city's 1980 rent-stabilization ordinance [55]. The rental board's refusal to even consider Searle's petition prompted him to file a lawsuit, alleging a violation of due process. In 1990, the California Supreme Court partially upheld Searle's argument in what became known as the "Searle Decision." This ruling mandated changes to Berkeley's rent-control policy, leading to significant rent increases across the city between 1991 and 1994. Searle, framing the issue as one of fundamental rights, was famously quoted as saying, "The treatment of landlords in Berkeley is comparable to the treatment of blacks in the South... our rights have been massively violated and we are here to correct that injustice" [56]. This rather extreme comparison, while controversial, highlights the depth of his conviction. The court, in its own assessment, described the heated debate surrounding the case as a "morass of political invective, ad hominem attack, and policy argument" [57], a fitting descriptor for many public philosophical and political clashes.

Following the tragic September 11 attacks, Searle penned an article in which he argued that these events were not isolated incidents but rather specific manifestations within a protracted, long-term struggle against forces fundamentally and intractably opposed to the United States. In this piece, he signaled his support for a more assertive, almost neoconservative interventionist foreign policy. He called for a stark recognition that the United States was, in essence, in a more-or-less permanent state of war with these inimical forces. Furthermore, he suggested that a probable and necessary course of action would involve denying terrorists any use of foreign territory from which to launch their attacks. Finally, he alluded to the enduring nature of this conflict and, with a subtle yet clear critique, attributed the attacks partly to a perceived lack of American resolve in forcefully confronting its enemies over the preceding several decades [58].

Sexual assault allegations

In March 2017, John Searle became the subject of serious sexual assault allegations, marking a deeply troubling chapter in his public and academic life. The Los Angeles Times reported: "A new lawsuit alleges that university officials failed to properly respond to complaints that John Searle ... sexually assaulted his ... research associate last July and cut her pay when she rejected his advances" [59][60]. This lawsuit brought to light not only the immediate complaint but also illuminated several earlier, previously unaddressed complaints against Searle, which UC Berkeley officials were alleged to have failed to act upon [61][62].

The lawsuit, formally filed in a California court on March 21, 2017, explicitly alleged sexual harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, and assault and battery. It sought damages from both Searle personally and from the Regents of the University of California in their capacity as his employers [63]. The legal filing further claimed that Jennifer Hudin, who served as the director of the John Searle Center for Social Ontology—where the complainant had been employed as Searle's assistant—had stated that Searle "has had sexual relationships with his students and others in the past in exchange for academic, monetary or other benefits" [63]. The public revelation of the lawsuit subsequently triggered the disclosure of several additional prior allegations of sexual harassment and assault attributed to Searle [64].

On June 19, 2019, following a thorough campus disciplinary process conducted by Berkeley's Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination, University of California President Janet Napolitano officially approved a recommendation that Searle's emeritus status be revoked. This decision came after a definitive determination that he had indeed violated university policies against sexual harassment and retaliation during the period between July and September 2016 [5]. A rather stark conclusion to a long, and often celebrated, academic career.

Awards and recognitions

Despite the later controversies, Searle's intellectual contributions were recognized with numerous accolades throughout his career. He received five honorary-doctorate degrees from institutions across four different countries, a testament to his global academic influence. Furthermore, he held honorary visiting professorships at both Tsinghua University and East China Normal University, bridging philosophical dialogues across diverse cultural landscapes.

Among his most notable honors, Searle was awarded the prestigious Jean Nicod Prize in 2000 [6], a recognition of his significant work in the philosophy of mind. In 2004, he received the National Humanities Medal [7], an award presented by the President of the United States to individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities. This was followed in 2006 by the Mind & Brain Prize [65], further cementing his standing as a leading figure in the interdisciplinary study of consciousness and cognition.

Personal life

John Searle held the distinguished titles of Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Language and Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. While he formally retired from active teaching in 2014, he continued to engage with students and deliver lectures until 2016 [66], demonstrating a prolonged dedication to his field. However, as noted, his emeritus title was officially revoked in June 2019 [5] due to findings of policy violations.

Beyond his rigorous academic pursuits, Searle cultivated a keen appreciation for leisure. He was known to enjoy skiing, sailing, and the refined art of wine tasting. Demonstrating a practical extension of this interest, he also owned a vineyard nestled in the picturesque Napa Valley, California [67], a rather fitting pursuit for someone who spent his life dissecting the subtle distinctions of human experience.

John Rogers Searle passed away at a hospital located in Safety Harbor, Florida, on September 17, 2025, at the age of 93 [4][67][68]. His death marked the end of a philosophical career that, for better or worse, consistently provoked, challenged, and shaped contemporary thought across multiple disciplines.

Bibliography

  • Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (1969), Cambridge University Press, ISBN  978-0-521-09626-3
  • The Campus War: A Sympathetic Look at the University in Agony (political commentary; 1971)
  • Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (essay collection; 1979)
  • Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (1983)
  • Minds, Brains and Science: The 1984 Reith Lectures (lecture collection; 1984)
  • Foundations of Illocutionary Logic (John Searle & Daniel Vanderveken 1985)
  • The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992)
  • The Construction of Social Reality (1995)
  • The Mystery of Consciousness (review collection; 1997)
  • Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World (summary of earlier work; 1998)
  • Rationality in Action (2001)
  • Consciousness and Language (essay collection; 2002)
  • Freedom and Neurobiology (lecture collection; 2004)
  • Mind: A Brief Introduction (summary of work in philosophy of mind; 2004)
  • Philosophy in a New Century: Selected Essays (2008)
  • Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization (2010)
  • "What Your Computer Can't Know" (review of Luciano Floridi, The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere Is Reshaping Human Reality, Oxford University Press, 2014; and Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford University Press, 2014), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXI, no. 15 (October 9, 2014), pp. 52–55.
  • Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory of Perception (2015)

See also