File:John_searle2.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
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.
Person · Open Library
- Works
- 1
Top works
- Consciousness
via Open Library + Wikidata
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 317
- Total plays
- 1,531
John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932 in Denver, Colorado) is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind, and for his views on practical reason and the characteristics of socially constructed versus physical realities. He was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize and the Jovellanos Prize in 2000, and the National Humanities Medal in 2004. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Jo
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- Generalized Gradient Approximation Made Simple
· 1996 · cited 200,201x
- Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
· 2021 · cited 41,536x
- Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology
· 2000 · cited 36,305x
- Matplotlib: A 2D Graphics Environment
· 2007 · cited 34,191x
- The MOS 36-ltem Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36)
· 1992 · cited 28,820x
via Crossref · CC0
Quotes
- “The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else.”
- “The ascription of an unconscious intentional phenomenon to a system implies that the phenomenon is in principle accessible to consciousness.”
- “Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.”
- “Materialism ends up denying the existence of any irreducible subjective qualitative states of sentience or awareness.”
- “Dualism makes the problem insoluble; materialism denies the existence of any phenomenon to study, and hence of any problem.”
- “Precisely by inculcating a critical attitude, the "canon" served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. Ironically, the same tradition is now regarded as oppressive. The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked.”
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
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
- Official website
- ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle
- Image
- John Searle speaking at Google 1.jpg
Show 4 more facts
- Commons category
- John Searle
- date of birth
- 1932-07-31
- name in native language
- John Rogers Searle
- date of death
- 2025-09-17
Sources (5)
via Wikidata · CC0
~38 min read
Article
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.