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John Searle
Sign in to saveAlso known as John R. Searle, John Rogers Searle
American philosopher (1932–2025)
John Searle was an influential American philosopher who spent most of his career at UC Berkeley developing theories about how the mind works, language functions, and what makes human consciousness distinct from artificial intelligence. His ideas matter because they shaped decades of debate about fundamental questions—such as whether computers can truly understand language or think like humans—that remain central to philosophy and artificial intelligence research today.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Key facts
- 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 ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1958 ; died 2017 )
- 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)
- Doctoral advisor
- J. L. Austin , Peter Strawson
- Era
- Contemporary philosophy
- Region
- Western philosophy
- School
- Analytic , Direct realism
- Institutions
- Christ Church, Oxford, UC Berkeley
- Doctoral students
- Bence Nanay
- 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
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- Denver
- Place of death
- Tampa
- Occupation
- linguist
- Languages spoken
- American English
- Native language
- American English
- Religion
- atheism
- Notable work
- Chinese room
- Doctoral advisor
- Peter Geach
- Field of work
- philosophy of mind
- Movement
- analytic philosophy
- Official website
- ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle
- Image
- John Searle speaking at Google 1.jpg
Show 8 more facts
- Commons category
- John Searle
- date of birth
- 1932-07-31
- name in native language
- John Rogers Searle
- influenced by
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- described by source
- University of Cologne
- writing language
- American English
- date of death
- 2025-09-17
Sources (5)
via Wikidata · CC0
~38 min read
Encyclopedic overview
John Rogers Searle (/sɜːrl/ ; July 31, 1932 – September 17, 2025) was an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1959 and was Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Language and Professor of the Graduate School until June 2019, when his status as professor emeritus was revoked after he was found to have engaged in sexual harassment and retaliation against a former student and employee, in violation of the university's sexual harassment policies.
As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Searle was secretary of "Students against Joseph McCarthy". He received all his university degrees, BA, MA, and DPhil, from the University of Oxford, where he held his first faculty positions. Later, at UC Berkeley, he became the first tenured professor to join the 1964–1965 Free Speech Movement.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “John Searle” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.