I enjoy reading Kurzweil because he's an adventurous thinker. This book is particularly fun because some other fine minds take him to task. Ray holds up well because he's a reasonable thinker. Although some of his predicitions seem outlandish, they may not be. You can't read this book without engaging in a lot of interesting visualization about the future. Some of it is frightening, but there is hope as well. Will the future runaway on it's own or will we be in charge? I don't know, but I'm sure thinking about it, now.

This is Ray Kurzweil's third book concerning the future of reductionist artificial intelligence design and it's possible effects on us in the decades yet to come. In THE AGE OF SPIRITUAL MACHINES, Kurzweil's previous book, which I enjoyed also, and this volume, he uses technological trends, including Moore's law and other tools, to show that a desktop computer will have achieved human level computational ability around the year 2020. Also, Kurzweil envisions that we will be able, sometime in the next few decades, to scan human brains and download that 'software' into these advanced computers to give them human level reasoning abilities, with the speed of computer neural nets, leaving humans behind, so to speak. Accordingly, it may also be possible to scan individual brains and load that information into an advanced computer (attached to a body of some kind), giving that person a sort of immortality. This is the gist of Kurzweil's argument, I hope I got it essentially correct.

What Kuzweil means by computers someday becoming 'spiritual' is that they may become conscious, and 'strong A.I.' is the view that "any computational process sufficiently capable of altering or organizing itself can produce consciousness." The first part of this book is an introduction to all of the above views by Kurzweil, followed by criticisms by four authors, followed in turn by Kurzweil as he refutes these criticisms.

Personally, I found most of the views expounded by the critics here to be either non-sensical, or 'beside the point'. One critic says that the life support functions of the brain cannot be separated from it's information processing function. Of course it can be, even the effects of hormones can be programmed into a downloaded brain, as well as other chemicals used by brains. Another critic states that possibly evolution is in error, and yet another criticism is that our machines will not be able to contact a divine entity and would thus be inferior.... give me a break, well...perhaps this is all true and maybe pigs will one day fly over the moon unassisted. I could go on and on, but this is the job of Ray Kurzweil and he defends himself admirably in the final chapters of this volume. Kurzweil does mention in this book that brain scanning machines are improving their resolution with each new generation, and eventually will reach a point where they should be able to image individual neurons and synapses in large areas, and allow the brain 'software' to be transferred to a suitable non-biological computing medium, my only criticism of Kurzweil here is that I think he should discuss this technology more, and where it is headed, his next book would be a great place for this.

One final point, it seems to me that when a new idea appears to be difficult and complicated to achieve, the pessimist says: "This is difficult and complicated, and may not work", whereas the optimist says: "This is difficult and complicated, but may work". Only time will tell for sure.

The work, inventions, and opinions of Ray Kurzweil in the field of artificial intelligence have captured media attention and the attention of philosophers and researchers in artificial intelligence. But not only is Kurzweil one of the most brilliant and controversial of all the individuals working in artificial intelligence, he is also the most optimistic. This optimism holds not only for the future technology of artificial intelligence, predicted by Kurzweil to give independent thinking machines in the next three decades, but also for its social impact. Kurzweil believes that artificial intelligence will work for the benefit of humankind, but that this benefit will depend to a great degree on his belief that humans will take on technology that will effectively make them cybernetic.

The controversy behind Kurzweil stems from his recent book "The Age of Spirtual Machines", which is a detailed accounting of his predictions and beliefs regarding artificial intelligence. Many individuals objected to his visions and predictions, and he answers a few of them in this book. In particular, he attempts to counter the arguments against him by the philosopher John Searle, the molecular biologist Michael Denton, the philosopher William A. Dembski, and zoologist Thomas Ray. With only a few minor exceptions, Kurzweil is successful in his refutation of their assertions.

But even if Kurzweil completely refutes the arguments of these individuals, and possibly many more against him, the countering of arguments will not by itself solve the problems in artificial intelligence research. The fact remains that much work still needs to be done before we are priveleged to see the rise of intelligent machines. Kurzweil is well-aware of this, for he acknowledges this many times in this book. He points to reverse engineering of the human brain as one of the most promising strategies to bring in the robotic presence. The success or failure of this strategy will take the mind-body problem out of purely academic circles and bring it to the forefront of practical research in artificial intelligence. The 21st century will thus see the rise of the "industrial philosopher", who works in the laboratory beside the programmers, cognitive scientists, robot engineers, and neurologists.

Each reader of this book will of course have their own opinions on Kurzweil's degree of success in countering the arguments of Searle, Denton, Dembski, and Ray. But one thing is very clear: Kurzweil is no arm-chair philosopher engaging in purely academic debates on the mind-body problem. He is right in the thick of the research and development of artificial intelligence, and if the future turns out as he predicts, he will certainly be one of the individuals contributing to it. He and many others currently working in artificial intelligence are responsible for major advances in this field in just the last few years. Their ingenuity and discipline is admirable in a field that has experienced a roller coaster ride of confidence and disappointment in the preceding decades. All of these individuals have proved themselves to be superb thinking machines.

This is NOT the typical interviews book, filled with self-indulgence and old-time stories. Mr. Faigenbaum uses his deep knowledge of Sarle's developments to discuss the central aspects of his body of work. This non-compromized approach, sheds light on the key role Searle played in 20th century's North American philosophy. Thorough but also entertaining, a book that should be read by anyone who wants to understand the underlying tension in current phlosophical ideas.

This is NOT the typical interviews book, in which the author, too lazy to write critical work, chats about personal stories. Mr. Faigenbaum thorough understanding of Searle's body of knowledge allows him to delve deeply into his philosophical developments. The reader can therefore easily comprehend the crucial role Searle played in 20th Century American philosophy. Mr. Faigenbaum does a good job at using the interview format to his advantage, keeping the book conceptual, complete and entertaining.

I was very helpful for me to read this book. It helped me to underestand many complex ideas, and to understand the most general positions of this scholar. I recomend it for everybody studying Searle's developements. It is easy reading and very deep. Dr. Faigenbaum, the interviewer, did a great job.

Before obtaining a copy of Senior "Cosmopolitan" Book Editor John Searles' "Boy Still Missing", I had been touting another fine work of fiction as one of the more important books I have had the pleasure of reading. Now, though, that's all changed. Searles work is vividly imagined and riveting, one of those rare page-turners that avid readers seek out so frequently...reminiscent of that "next fix" mentality.

"Boy Still Missing", with its numerous twists and turns, tells the story of 15-year-old Dominick Pindle, a somewhat troubled teen for whom the wheels of life seem to threaten running him over rather than carrying him to any great destinations. His mother spends many nights dragging him around their "nowhere" New England town, searching rabidly for his father, who may or may not be having an affair with the town beauty. On one of these numerous drive-by's, Dominick meets Edie, the "other woman", and nothing is the same ever again. Finding himself caught up in an escalating nightmare from which he cannot awaken, Dominick watches in horror as his world begins to crash in upon itself. Searles builds his tension masterfully page after page, culminating in a nail-biting climax that's sure to impress even the most jaded reader. I found myself having to set this book down and walking away from it for a minute to calm myself down. Thoroughly engrossing, I advise you to buy this book now and devour it...again and again!

I read so many book covers and reviews. Some people hate the book and some people love it. How do you make a good book selection with so much on the market and such varying points of view?

John Searles may have bridged the gap of fickle book readers by writing this novel that will appeal to everyone. It has suspense, mystery, love and action. The words flow beautifully and the chronology is smooth.

Even the name of the main character, "Dominick", is especially appealing. Ever read a book that introduces so many characters with similar names that you need a family tree to keep them apart? Not here. Searles makes each character distinct and special.

Dominick is a hard luck teen with a [junky] family. His father's an alcoholic and Mom is neglected. He tries to make them all happy but how can he when the core is rotten. Dominick finds solace in this friends. But when he is taken advantage of by his father's girlfriend it sends him off the deep end.

Read for the plot or the people, it makes no difference. Both engage you for the entire 292 pages. Just long enough to make you want more but not get bored.

This is one of the best book's I've read in a while--I actually read it in one sitting. When 15-year-old Dominick Pindle's father gets a beautiful divorcee pregnant, Dominick steals money from his mother to help his father's mistress--and inadvertantly causes the death of his mother. The result is a poignant, fast-paced, and exceptionally well-written novel, that almost borders on a mystery. The characters in this novel are human, perfectly flawed--and yet you still feel sympathy for them and want everyone to come out happy in the end. (Except for maybe the slimy Roget, the town sheriff who gets Dominick's mother pregnant.) As Chris Bohjalian says on the back cover, you miss these characters when the book is done. I highly recommend this book--and I can't wait for Searles' next novel!

Yeah, so, I'm going to avoid the part where i think that a couple of important things in this book are stated too vaguely for a responsible philosopher, or where i mention that he seems to make one or two blatant errors of omission. I'm going to avoid these things for the dual reasons that a) they aren't really relevant to whether you should read this or not, and b) i allow for the possibility that i'm imagining these gaps because i haven't understood him, in which case i'm the stupid one. Given my presistent commitment to Legends of the Hidden Temple, that's a distinct possibility.

In spite of what i consider some overly-squooshy language in a handful of places, this is a great book. I'd read intentionality, but never speech acts, and this book seems to tie all of searle's ideas into one large discussion about speech, intention, consciousness, with a few of the expected cuts on AI. It's really put together very well, and the flow from discussions of consciousness to intention to speech acts makes each of the constituent pieces more poigniant. Searle very rarely drifts into blustering territory, writing clearly and concisely in most of the cases where i found a need for really detailed exposition. Good stuff.

So, like i say, 7 times out of 10, i find Searle less than compelling, but this is a really nice survey of a lot of his ideas, and worth a read either as an introduction to his thinking or as a piece that ties together a lot of his older ideas into one coherent package. He's an important guy with important ideas who has helped shape a lot of important discussions, agree or disagree, this book articulates these contributions well.

Searle has collected a large and important variety of articles in this text, which spans several years of thinking on issues such as: the nature of consciousness, free will, the mind-body problem, rationality, and collective action. Only one article on Kripke's meaning skepticism has been not previously published.

The vigor and force of questions that Searle queries regarding how it is possible to reconcile our intuitions about having a 'free will' in a world of physical laws and (all things being equal) deterministic principles is important and fundamental. I highly recommend this volume, which conveniently assembles previous articles, and it makes clear Searle's position on these problems. Indeed, it makes clear exactly how difficult and challenging philosophical problems and questions are--and why philosophers stay awake at nights thinking about them...and why no easy solution is forthcoming in philosophy or science...

The articles are written in Searle's usual style--with problem solving on his mind--clearly stating the problem to be addressed and evaluated--a model of philosophical prose...

And I might add...the cover photograph of Searle is splendid--him in a tweed coat...autumn leaves...just in case you've wondered what a suave academic is supposed to look like nowdays...

Well, here we go again. Back to the proverbial rationality and free will drawing board. I recommend a slew of preliminary texts as an overview of the field, such as Williams, Scheffler, Korsgaard, Scanlon, Velleman, Nozick, etc.

Nevertheless, Searle writes with his usual clear, direct, and economic prose. He enters a crowded practical reason debate with, again, his usual bravado. He argues against Williams's externalist view by describing substantial tautological errors. But this approach tends to oversimplify Williams's complex view. One wonders if Searle's reading of Williams is actually right (or careful enough). I prefer Scanlon's handling of W's externalism in the Appendix to What We Owe to Each Other, and McDowell's well-known article on the subject.

The strength of Searle's book is his defense of an internalist view of rationality and action, which resurrects his views on intentionality and speech acts. He thoroughly demonstrates in one chapter how a Deductive Model in rationality (i.e., a practical syllogism ala Kenny) cannot work. He also clearly identifies the major problems in practical reason, conflicting reasons, and defends a novel approach, what he calls a semantic categorical imperative. This is a controversial view, which navigates between (or circumvents) Humean and Kantian theories on moral motivation.

Another stregth of the book is how Searle connects rationality in action (hence the title of the book) and his theory of intentionality to the free will problem. In the last chapters, he clearly identifies just what the nature of the free will problem is, which is pretty much a rehashing of his chapter in Minds, Brains, and Science (Harvard UP). The reader gets a clear picture of how and why the free will issue is a major contemporary philosophical problem, requiring a correct scientific research project to help solve the problem. One also gets a clear view of a top-notch philosopher at work on this serious problem. It is obvious why this problem has kept Searle awake at nights--why he misses the freeway on-ramp during his drive to work. It is a seemingly insoluable problem, and Searle makes the nature of the problem and the reasons that it keeps philosophers awake at night explicit.

So the book closes, basically, with a challenge for philosophers to continue work on free will and rationality. It is also a challenge for scientists in the labs to work on a research program that would identify the whole problem and its potential solution.

This book is in many senses a very unusual philosophy one. First, even the topic is not easy Searle has showed an extreme effort and capacity to express himself with clarity. In this book you can always know what the author thinks, based on which premises he believes so, and of course what problem he is trying to solve.
I got surprised when I saw that Searle changed his view respect to the free will expressed in "minds, brain and science" where he reached to the conclusion that no real free will may exist. In this book he not only accept his error, but also produce a complete description of the "gaps" that cannot be filled with necessity and, therefore, require free will. He moves one step forward and declares that a humean being is not enough to describe human beings, on the contrary a substantial being able of free will is what is required.
So clarity, rigor and honesty is the characteristic of this book.
Going to the book, it basically says that in our action there are gaps, meaning for gaps, actions that cannot be completely explained by external causes, so we, as free will holders, must decide our actions. This is extensively discussed in it, and so are many of the consequences of that.
In the book Searle tried to provide an explanation for moral commitment based on the compromised derived from the use of language more than solutions based on cost-benefit analysis.
I believe that he is right in the second, partially right in the recognition of the importance of speech acts as compromisers but I certainly believe that we need more to justify he ethic behavior.
I'll wait for new books from Searle , I want to read more shinning thoughts like those showed in this book and I may end up finding that he keeps improving.

For anyone familiar with contemporary analytical philosophy, they will indubitably recognize the name John Searle. Well known for taking up the Speech Act project started by the late Oxford philosopher J.L. Austin, Searle has found his niche in Mind, Language and Society: a clear and concise presentation that brings complex philosophical issues from the Ivory Tower to the casual reader (the Real World?).

This book is a very good "intermediate" philosophical text for the younger student interested in getting a more in depth look at some the many major problems that have always perplexed philosophers -- skepticism, the mind-body problem, intentionality and consciousness -- but Searle also places these issues into his own philosophical project -- a "re-invention" of enlightenment philosophy and the cartesian theatre of the mind.

I would not recommend, as others have, of using this book as a source for advanced philosophical research. Searle's other texts and papers like *Intentionality* and *Speech Acts* take these discussions a few steps further in thier analytic analysis. Also, the endnoting used in the book is not very practical for those of us who follow footnotes as crucial elements of a discussion.

All in all, however, this book is a excellent achievement of transparent style and presentation.

John Searle has presented brilliantly original basic theories in the philosophy of language, mind, and the nature of institutional reality. This book summarizes this work, and very importantly, shows the interconnections and hierarchical arrangement of his ideas. Those new to Searle should read this as *the* introduction to his work; those familiar with his work will profit from the arrangement of all of his theories into a single, fully integrated, philosophy.

This book is an excellent summation of Searle's thought. The first section is an attack on antirealist (i.e., there are no facts in the world independent of facts we construct with thoughts and language) strains in contemporary intellectual circles that is right on the money. The next section reiterates Searle's position that consciousness is a biological phenomenon and the product of the brain. While I think that Searle avoids ontological issues, his main aim is to do away with the Cartesian (i.e., the mind is a distinct substance from matter) framework that haunts the mind-body debate.

Finally, Searle presents his thoughts on how social and institutional facts (like "money", "points in a ballgame", "marriage", etc.) enter into the world. The conclusion of the book talks about what the role of philosophy is and how philosophy makes progress. That is, Searle explains the importance of philosophy.

How can we reconcile our perspective as "conscious, free, mindful, rational" creatures in an impersonal universe composed entirely of "mindless, meaningless" physical particles? How, indeed, can we suppose that these ineffable mental states which compose consiousness can affect material things and yet elude physical description? It's easy enough to imagine a meaningless universe of particle soup. But adding consiousness to the mix often seems like the dreaded "nomological dangler" - what Ockham's Razor attempts to sever from a complicated theory.

John Searle attempts to solve these questions and more in this intruiging book for the non-technician such as myself. I found his ideas concerning the consciousness problem intriguing, lucid and very well formulated. These constituted the first lecture and helped him take on computer-affectionate behaviorists and cognitive scientists in the second and third.

In the fourth and fifth lectures, Searle reflects on the nature of action and the difficulties inherent in the social sciences. These build up to his last lecture where he confronts the freedom of will problem. Unfortunately, he makes this problem devastatingly clear without presenting a solution to my satisfaction. The nature of action forces one to believe that we are not walking somnabulists or marionettes. But the physical sciences haunts us yet with the prospect of determinism (or indeterminism, which is equally devastating for free will). The author ends the lecture with a ponderous question mark. At least he's honest!

Searle is an interesting philosopher for me to read, because I was trained in neurobiology, and Searle is a philosopher who thinks like a neurobiologist. On the other hand, I am a neurobiologist who thinks like a philosopher.

Although the book discusses several classical problems such as the problem of freedom and free will, the mind-body problem, right and wrong, etc., for me the two most interesting chapters were the one on the mind-body problem, and the one on cognitive psychology.

Here Searle proposes a thorough-going biological and physical explanation that, as a neurobiolgist, I've always liked myself.

You really need to read these two chapters to understand all the details, of course, but I'll briefly summarize his idea, and you can decide if it makes sense to you.

Basically, Searle says there really is no mind-body problem. This dichotomy occured because philosophy completely misunderstood the entire issue. There is no mind-body problem, because the mind depends on the brain, and on the neural workings of the brain, and there is no reason even to say that consciousness itself is separate from the brain itself.

Searle points out that we explain the properties of normal matter, such as a steel ball, which has mass, weight, is impenetrable, is magnetic, and so on, by reference to its atomic and molecular properties. There is no reason to posit any intevening layer of "rules" or theory.

It's the same with the mind-body problem. Mind depends on neurons. All our behavior depends on neurons. There is no reason to posit this intermediate entity of consciousness or of mind which is separate from the underlying biology. There is no doubt that consciousness exists, but there's nothing special about it, and although Searle doesn't claim it can be reduced to neural functions yet, he leaves no doubt that classical views about the mind and consciousness are fundamentally flawed.

Anyway, I can certainly sympathize with this point of view, and would like to make a point of my own. I've studied the brain, and when you see people with tiny, focal, strokes in the language area of the brain who have no detectable impairment except they can no longer use articles or conjunctions in their speech, or people with temporal lobe damage who can easily name an object when you show it to them, but who can't tell you its function, and vice versa, where there are people who have temporal lobe damage in an adjacent area with exactly the reverse syndrome--they can tell you what its for but can't name the object--in other words, the naming function and the definition function seem to be separate in the temporal lobe, and the two areas must communicate in order to be able to do both, or at least the information is stored separately and you need access to both--you very quickly get the idea that if it's not in the brain, it's not anywhere. There are legions of other neurological cases where people have lost very specific or general functions depending on the source and extent of the damage to the brain.

Furthermore, it's becoming clearer as a result of research that there is no single part of the brain that gives rise to consciousness. Consciousness relates to different functions located in different parts of the brain being integrated in time through a finely controlled and switched system of neural communications pathways. Thus, consciousness is not a unitary entity at all, although it might seem so to our own introspective minds. More accurately, it is a unified process that occurs through the integration of diverse brain areas and brain functions.

Anyway, Searle's biological reductionism and determism isn't very different from how neuroscientists think, and I give him credit for being willing to discuss the subject in those terms and propose such a radical solution (from the standpoint of most philosophers) to the mind-body problem.

This is the kind of book that you can finish in a day and makes you think about things like whether computers will think or not. I personally found it interesting and a good introduction to things like cognitive science.

I sympathize with many of Searle's views about the inelliminability of the intentional character of consciousness, and the general misguidedness of philosophy of mind.. but I would ask: is this a big discovery? why read Searle rather than Husserl in the first place? Is his naturalism of any philosophical depth or interest? I would say no. I believe reading this book is a waste of time, as it was for me...

This book gives a good picture of the structure of the mind and of its irreducibility.
It explains clearly what's the stumbling block of all scientific and philosophical problems with consciousness: the fact that the mind is only a subjective first-person experience.

But the most interesting part, for me, was his convincing attack against cognitivismn (the theory that the brain is a computer and the mind a computer program).

Nevertheless, I found his book 'The Mystery of Consciousness' more interesting, more profound and more specific, because it laid bare the accuracies / errors of other author's who wrote about the same important items.

In this book, Searle briefly reviews the history of the mind-body problem and presents his solution to it. The text is less filled with archaic or strictly philosophical phrases than most books in this field, giving it a comprehensibility that is too often lacking in the mind-body problem. Searle is a brilliant rhetorician, and every one of his arguments is worded in a convincing way. Also, the critique that he presents of the previous work on the mind-body problem is revealing, since he gives what he calls "common-sense objections" to each solution. Overall, an outstanding book.

If your reading Jacques Derrida, esp. Limited Inc and Psyche this work along with Austin's How to do Things with Words are essential. These two books are the fundamental texts of Speech Act Theory. So if you want to find out about Locutions, Illocutionary Force and whatnot check out this text.

Searle's new book is a compilation of articles previously published in The New York Review of Books, from 1995-1997. While the articles are self-contained, there is a definite theme that runs through them: that recent attempts to explain consciousness are either based on conceptual confusion or offer solutions that are at best promissory notes. Among those singled out for conceptual confusion are Roger Penrose, Daniel Dennett, and David Chalmers. Those who are in the right ballpark but do not deliver on their claims are Francis Crick, Gerald Edelman, and Israel Rosenfeld. Or, to put it more succinctly, the former group is conceptually confused since they do not share Searle's view that consciousness is an irreducible biological property of the brain. The latter group fails to deliver because, while they correctly treat consciousness as a biological phenomenon, they do not explain consciousness in the sense of giving an account of how the brain actually causes conscious states.

Searle's merciless criticisms of recent approaches to consciousness are based on his own original viewpoint proposed in his books Minds, Brains, and Science (1984) and The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992). According to Searle, consciousness is both an irreducibly subjective mental phenomenon and a biological feature of the brain. Searle compares consciousness to digestion in the stomach or the sharpness of a pain, higher-level features of physical structures which are at the same time caused by lower-level micro-features of these structures. The mind/body problem is solved when we repudiate the dogmatic assumption that all properties are exclusively mental or physical. This forced dichotomy has led many philosophers to advocate either dualism, where the mental and the physical are separate phenomena, or materialism, where the mental gets completely eliminated in favor of the physical. Dualism leads to the insoluble problem of mind/body interaction, while materialism ignores the simple fact that we are conscious (most of the time, at any rate), and that consciousness "is the condition that makes it possible for anything to matter to anybody." (xiv) By countenancing consciousness as both mental and physical, Searle delivers us out of this problematic. As a mental phenomenon, consciousness is an irreducible property which is given to us in moments of sentient awareness; and as a biological property, we can (in principle) explain consciousness in terms of the methods of the natural sciences.

From this vantage point, any view that posits a form of materialism or dualism will be accused of conceptual confusion, a failure to see that the "mental" need not stand in opposition to the "physical." Thus Searle is led to dismiss the views of Chalmers (the property dualist) and Dennett (the materalist) without much difficulty. However, Searle's dismissive approach fails to appreciate that these views advance powerful arguments against Searle's own precarious double-aspect view. Take Chalmers' argument first. Chalmers argues that there is a logically possible zombie world physically identical to our own but without any conscious properties. If so, then the conscious facts that obtain in the actual world cannot be logically deduced from the physical facts. As Chalmers concludes, "facts about consciousness are further facts about our world, over and above the physical facts." Searle objects that the argument is question-begging, since it presupposes that an absence of consciousness would not logically entail a change in the physical features of the world. There is a logically possible world where pigs fly, but that would entail a change in the physical facts. Similarly, Searle argues, there is a logically possible world where there is no consciousness, but if consciousness is a physical feature of the world, such a world would require a change in the physical facts. Thus Chalmers' argument only works if he assumes that consciousness is non-physical, which is the very point he is supposed to prove.

Both Chalmers and Searle agree that biological facts are logically supervenient on the physical facts, so that a world which contained the same physical facts would logically entail the same biological facts. Since consciousness is a biological fact, for Searle, he concludes that the physical facts logically entail the conscious facts. Chalmers, however, initially takes it to be an open question whether consciousness is a biological fact; the point of the thought-experiment is to show that there is an important difference between consciousness and biological facts. For we cannot imagine a world physically identical to ours but where no digestion occurs; given identical physical processes in the stomach, digestion must occur in this world as a logical consequence. As Chalmers puts it, "even God could not have created a world that was physically identical to ours but biologically distinct." However, we can imagine a world which is physically identical to ours but where there is no consciousness. Insofar as such a world is coherent, Chalmers is not begging the question by assuming that consciousness is non-physical. For the whole point of the thought-experiment is to demonstrate a disanalogy between consciousness and physical properties. It is clear that it is Searle who is begging the question by just assuming that consciousness is a physical/biological fact and then plugging his ears to Chalmers' thought-experiment based on this assumption. ...[edited for length]

It seems that, no matter what neurophysiological processes are offerred as explanations for co

Searle's new book is a compilation of articles previouslypublished in The New York Review of Books, from 1995-1997. While thearticles are self-contained, there is a definite theme that runsthrough them: that recent attempts to explain consciousness are either based on conceptual confusion or offer solutions that are at best promissory notes. Among those singled out for conceptual confusion are Roger Penrose, Daniel Dennett, and David Chalmers. Those who are in the right ballpark but do not deliver on their claims are Francis Crick, Gerald Edelman, and Israel Rosenfeld. Or, to put it more succinctly, the former group is conceptually confused since they do not share Searle's view that consciousness is an irreducible biological property of the brain. The latter group fails to deliver because, while they correctly treat consciousness as a biological phenomenon, they do not explain consciousness in the sense of giving an account of how the brain actually causes conscious states.

Searle's merciless criticisms of recent approaches to consciousness are based on his own original viewpoint proposed in his books Minds, Brains, and Science (1984) and The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992). According to Searle, consciousness is both an irreducibly subjective mental phenomenon and a biological feature of the brain. Searle compares consciousness to digestion in the stomach or the sharpness of a pain, higher-level features of physical structures which are at the same time caused by lower-level micro-features of these structures. The mind/body problem is solved when we repudiate the dogmatic assumption that all properties are exclusively mental or physical. This forced dichotomy has led many philosophers to advocate either dualism, where the mental and the physical are separate phenomena, or materialism, where the mental gets completely eliminated in favor of the physical. Dualism leads to the insoluble problem of mind/body interaction, while materialism ignores the simple fact that we are conscious (most of the time, at any rate), and that consciousness "is the condition that makes it possible for anything to matter to anybody." (xiv) By countenancing consciousness as both mental and physical, Searle delivers us out of this problematic. As a mental phenomenon, consciousness is an irreducible property which is given to us in moments of sentient awareness; and as a biological property, we can (in principle) explain consciousness in terms of the methods of the natural sciences.

From this vantage point, any view that posits a form of materialism or dualism will be accused of conceptual confusion, a failure to see that the "mental" need not stand in opposition to the "physical." Thus Searle is led to dismiss the views of Chalmers (the property dualist) and Dennett (the materalist) without much difficulty. However, Searle's dismissive approach fails to appreciate that these views advance powerful arguments against Searle's own precarious double-aspect view. Take Chalmers' argument first. Chalmers argues that there is a logically possible zombie world physically identical to our own but without any conscious properties... It is clear that it is Searle who is begging the question by just assuming that consciousness is a physical fact and then plugging his ears to Chalmers' thought-experiment based on this assumption.

This kind of argumentation is characteristic of Searle's entire book. He sets up the debate in his way-- the "right" way-- and then refuses to consider the force of any argument that does not adhere to his own agenda. The treatment of Dennett is symptomatic in this regard. Searle's basic criticism is that Dennett "denies the existence of the data" (p.99) for a theory of consciousness, and hence whatever Dennett is doing, it is not explaining consciousness but rather explaining it away. But Dennett is hardly denying the existence of the data, the phenomenology of pain, vision, thinking, and so forth . What he denies is a false ontological interpretation of this data, that these states refer to independently real entities, "given" to awareness in a self-standing Cartesian realm. Searle assumes that the "data" are the full-blown ontological realities of mental states, but this begs the question against Dennett, who argues that these so-called ontological realities are not the raw data but rather interpretations-- bad interpretations of the data.

Characteristically, Searle's entire argument against Dennett rests on wheeling out his own view that a first-person ontology of mental states is consistent with treating the mind as part of the natural order. He writes:

Dennett has a definition of science which excludes the possibility that science might investigate subjectivity, and he thinks the third-person objectivity of science forces him to this definition. But that is a bad pun on 'objectivity.' The aim of science is to get a systematic account of how the world works. One part of the world consists of ontologically subjective phenomena. (p.114)

This fails to even address Dennett's project, for Dennett devotes 511 pages to working out the possibility of a view where "subjective phenomena" get explained as benign user illusions, similar to treating a face in a mirror as a "real" face, or the game on television as a "real" game. In order for Searle's objection to have any weight against Dennett, he must enter into the details of Dennett's project, and show how these details fail to make the case against the ontological validity of phenomenological states. He cannot simply assume that subjective mental phenomena are ontologically objective and then use this assumption to dismiss Dennett's project.

One might think that Searle would be more sympathetic to projects which do not deny the ontological facts of consciousness and yet try to explain these facts in terms of the neurophysiological workings of the brain. Indeed, Searle maintains that consciousness is a biological property of the brain and so should be studied just like any other biological phenomenon. One might think that, but one would be wrong. For Searle appears equally dismissive of recent projects within the natural sciences to explain consciousness. In his section on Francis Crick, Searle criticizes Crick's hypothesis that consciousness arises from synchronized firings of neurons in the 40 hertz range. Even if Crick were right, the most he has shown is that conscious facts are "correlated" with such neuron firings. What we need to be shown, Searle insists, is some "mechanism" that will explain consciousness in terms of lower-level properties of the brain. As he puts it,

Even if Crick's speculation turns out to be 100 percent correct we still need to know the mechanisms whereby the neural correlates cause the conscious feelings, and we are a long way from even knowing the form such an explanation might take (p.34).

It seems that, no matter what neurophysiological processes are offerred as explanations for consciousness, t

Searle is certainly not timid in this collection of essays, based on reviews he wrote in the New York Review of Books. However, Searle is not really combative either - he is rather very straightforward in his argumentation. That, combined with the back-and-forth responses between Searle and some of the reviewed authors is very instructive to introducing one to some of the various philosophical stances toward consciousness and the mind-brain problem.

Searle's own stance is one of 'biological naturalism'. This view is best explicated in Searle's _The Rediscovery of the Mind_. It, roughly speaking, is a view that: 1) consciousness is a real, intrinsically first-person phenomena; 2) consciousness is brain-based - that is, it is physically based; and, 3) by virtue of #1 mind is not a reducible phenomena (since any third-person reduction destroys the essential 1st-person characteristic that makes consciousness what it is). Scientific study of the mind is not thereby discounted - such study need only take these points into account.

Regarding Edelman and Crick, Searle points out that despite that whatever neurological evidence and elaborations they may have come up with (in terms of neurological theories), neither presents a theory of consciousness per se. Whatever the 40Hz theory says, it can only claim a correlative relation, not a causitive relation, to consciousness at this point in its development.
[For my money, _I of the Vortex_ by Rodolfo Llinas is more interesting than Edelman or Crick, and Llinas is somewhat less hyperbolic about his claims.]

Penrose is just tragically out to lunch, poor guy. And, if anything, Searle is overly generous in his treatment of Penrose's Godelian / computational arguments. The role of algorithmic simulation and the Incompleteness Theorems of Godel are grossly misused by Penrose, and Searle lets most of it slide, although he acknowledges that many criticisms along "technical" lines have been posed against Penrose.
[A far more cogent understanding of the mind-brain problem in relation to Godel, simulation, and Church-Turing thesis, is in Robert Rosen's daunting _Essays on Life Itself_].

It is true that one could conceivably agree with Dennett that there is no consciousness and our sense of self-awareness is just illusion. But I think that such a view is neither common-sensically nor neurologically supported, or even suggested, for that matter. And Searle rightly flushes Dennett out from under the latter's evasive handwaving. I agree with Searle that Dennett's view is "pathological". There is a "lively" back-and-forth between the two. :)

Chalmers' supervenience view is next. And I think Searle rightly highlights the errors of this view. The reviewer who says that Searle is the one begging the question by disallowing Chalmer's zombie thought experiment (imagine a world with a physically identical zombie to a person in this world but with no consciousness) is mistaken, in my opinion. Since consciousness is not, a priori, fractionable from a person without causing some physical change in so doing, the onus is on Chalmers to show that such a fractionation is even theoretically possible in =this= world, =before= he poses a thought experiment where such a possible other world is presupposed. Otherwise, his thought experiment is just wishful thinking about some other fantasy world. To allow Chalmers to make such a claim without evidence is to let Chalmers presume his own conclusion.

Finally. the reviewer who commented that Searle implies that biological naturalism says consciousness is only a property of "biological matter", and another reviewer who similarly comments on the "privileged" status of only biological organisms as possibly conscious, both slightly miss Searle's point. Searle says that biological systems are =causally sufficient= to have the property of consciousness: only brains produce consciousness because those are precisely the only systems we know of that have consciousness. He in fact says, "Perhaps it is a feature we could duplicate in silicon or vacuum tubes. At present, we just do not know." (p.203) So, "biological matter" is not somehow privileged per se, or vitalistic in any sense.

Part of the problem is that Searle's own view is presented only in a very compact, piecemeal form in this book. The interested reader will find that reading _The Rediscovery of the Mind_ will make Searle's own theory much clearer, and as a result will also make clearer Searle's objections to the other theories presented in this book of reviews.