Consciousness and Language

One of the most important and influential philosophers of the last 30 years, John Searle has been concerned throughout his career with a single overarching question: how can we have a unified and theoretically satisfactory account of ourselves and of our relations to other people and to the natural world?

In other words, how can we reconcile our common-sense conception of ourselves as conscious, free, mindful, rational agents in a world that we believe includes brute, unconscious, mindless, meaningless, mute physical particles in fields of force?

The essays in this collection are related to this broad overarching issue that unites the diverse strands of Searle's work. As many as these essays have previously only been available in relatively obscure books and journals, this collection will be of particular interest to philosophers and those in psychology and linguistics.

Since 1959, John R. Searle has been Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, where he is now the Mills Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Language. His many books include Mind Language and Society, (Basic, 1998). The Construction of Social Reality, (Free Press, 1997), and Speech Acts, (Cambridge, 1969). His works have been translated in 21 languages. Seale has received many prizes, awards and honors, including the Fulbright Award (twice), the Guggenheim, and ACLS Fellowships.