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1. Mind: A Brief Introduction (Fundamentals of Philosophy) by John R. Searle | |
Paperback: 240
Pages
(2005-07-28)
list price: US$19.95 -- used & new: US$11.75 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0195157346 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Customer Reviews (14)
Classic Searle - Clear, Entertaining and Provocative
barking up the wrong tree
Good Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind
Good introduction to the topic, but his own theories are flawed
Confused, Muddled Thinking |
2. Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization by John Searle | |
Hardcover: 224
Pages
(2010-01-12)
list price: US$24.95 -- used & new: US$13.20 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0195396170 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Customer Reviews (5)
a perplexity and a note
Basic Study of Social Reality
Ok , Better With The Itunes Course
A great book by a great Philosopher.
Finally, a philosophy that fits experience |
3. The Mystery of Consciousness by John R. Searle | |
Paperback: 224
Pages
(1997-09-01)
list price: US$12.95 -- used & new: US$6.70 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0940322064 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Customer Reviews (32)
Return to sanity
Unwilling to relent
Critique of Qualia and Searle
Not as good as I had hoped
For everyone who missed Searle's reviews in The New York Review of Books... |
4. Philosophy in a New Century: Selected Essays by John R. Searle | |
Paperback: 210
Pages
(2008-12-29)
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Editorial Review Product Description Customer Reviews (3)
New Century Analytic Arrogance
The Greatest Philosopher of our time.
At last, sanity from Berkeley |
5. Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power (Columbia Themes in Philosophy) by John Searle | |
Paperback: 128
Pages
(2008-08-27)
list price: US$19.95 -- used & new: US$7.36 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0231137532 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Our self-conception derives mostly from our own experience. We believe ourselves to be conscious, rational, social, ethical, language-using, political agents who possess free will. Yet we know we exist in a universe that consists of mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute physical particles. How can we resolve the conflict between these two visions? InFreedom and Neurobiology, the philosopher John Searle discusses the possibility of free will within the context of contemporary neurobiology. He begins by explaining the relationship between human reality and the more fundamental reality as described by physics and chemistry. Then he proposes a neurobiological resolution to the problem by demonstrating how various conceptions of free will have different consequences for the neurobiology of consciousness. In the second half of the book, Searle applies his theory of social reality to the problem of political power, explaining the role of language in the formation of our political reality. The institutional structures that organize, empower, and regulate our lives-money, property, marriage, government-consist in the assignment and collective acceptance of certain statuses to objects and people. Whether it is the president of the United States, a twenty-dollar bill, or private property, these entities perform functions as determined by their status in our institutional reality. Searle focuses on the political powers that exist within these systems of status functions and the way in which language constitutes them. Searle argues that consciousness and rationality are crucial to our existence and that they are the result of the biological evolution of our species. He addresses the problem of free will within the context of a neurobiological conception of consciousness and rationality, and he addresses the problem of political power within the context of this analysis. A clear and concise contribution to the free-will debate and the study of cognition,Freedom and Neurobiology is essential reading for students and scholars of the philosophy of mind. Customer Reviews (6)
Good short read.
Dense, Disappointing, and Interesting
What old people write when they no longer care about readers
Musings on Free Will
Superficial |
6. Boy Still Missing: A Novel (P.S.) by John Searles | |
Paperback: 320
Pages
(2005-06-01)
list price: US$13.95 -- used & new: US$0.82 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0060822430 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description It is June 1971. Dominick Pindle, a tenderhearted but aimless Massachusetts teenager, spends his nights driving around with his mother and dragging his wayward father out of bars. Late one evening, Dominick's search puts him face-to-face withhis father's seductive mistress, Edie Kramer. Instantly in lust, he begins a forbidden relationship with this beautiful, mysterious woman. Before long, though, their erotic entanglement leads to a shocking death, and Dominick discovers that the mother he betrayed hid secrets as dark and destructive as his own. Charged with the exhilarating narrative pace of a thriller and set during a complicated and explosive era, Boy Still Missing is the critically acclaimed debut novel from John Searles. It renders a deeply affecting portrait of a boy whose passage into adulthood proves as complex and impassioned as the history that unfolds before his eyes. Customer Reviews (45)
captivating
Haunting, lyrical and melodic ...
What's a Boy to Do?
Novel Still Missing
Polarized opinions |
7. Minds, Brains and Science (1984 Reith Lectures) by John Searle | |
Paperback: 112
Pages
(1986-01-01)
list price: US$18.00 -- used & new: US$12.77 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0674576330 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Minds, Brains and Science takes up just the problems that perplex people, and it does what good philosophy always does: it dispels the illusion caused by the specious collision of truths. How do we reconcile common sense and science? Searle argues vigorously that the truths of common sense and the truths of science are both right and that the only question is how to fit them together. Searle explains how we can reconcile an intuitive view of ourselves as conscious, free, rational agents with a universe that science tells us consists of mindless physical particles. He briskly and lucidly sets out his arguments against the familiar positions in the philosophy of mind, and details the consequences of his ideas for the mind-body problem, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, questions of action and free will, and the philosophy of the social sciences. Customer Reviews (8)
modern philosophy
Not bad...
a classic
Concise, Clear and Important
Cogent and hard-hitting 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. ... Read more |
8. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge Paperback Library) by John R. Searle | |
Paperback: 292
Pages
(1983-05-31)
list price: US$45.00 -- used & new: US$35.00 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0521273021 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Customer Reviews (2)
Excellent Modern Theory of Mind Analytic philosophy is often difficult enough, and this book is of average difficulty, but when an author does not write clearly with near-run-on sentences, myandering and labyrinthine syntax, and in less than necessary obtuseness, it is a drawback. This is my only complaint. Part of the problem is the author's, part reader's. Searle is going against the analytic grain by expositing a theory of mind that is at once novel and distinctive, clearing up confusions and ambiguities along the way. But these new ideas and the direction of fit they present are exciting and facinating, even if the presentation is less than perfect. It's hard to imagine modern-day analytic philosophers going out on a limb with actual theory (they tend toward the criticism of others), so that it is refreshing that someone of Mr. Searle's reputation and caliber takes a stab at presenting a coherent theory of mind in new dress and ambiance: Naive realism. This isn't the first book of Searle's I'd recommend. That honor goes to "Mind, Language, and Society," his short, but densely argued, and clearer exposition, of several ideas (some of which he adumbrates from this volume). If you like what you read in THAT book, this book will further delight you. What's so agreeable about Searle, if not his syntax, is his willingness to posit a coherent theory of mind in the traditional vein but in entirely new clothing. It's refreshing to see a modern philosopher actually doing philosophy, not critiquing the philosophy of others. Searle would probably have advanced his cause by having someone else tidy up his presentation, as this drawback reduces the splendor of the overall book.
Frames the large picture of the mind-body duality Perhaps the best way to sum up his book is that he believes there is no difference between the mind and the body, and that the original question is flawed, yet at the same time, he establishes the existence of an intention, an entirely mental concept have physical equivalences. This is really an uninspired type of answer, and is largely considered a cop-out by most. ... Read more |
9. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language by John R. Searle | |
Paperback: 203
Pages
(1970-01-01)
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Editorial Review Product Description |
10. Mind, Language, and Society : Philosophy in the Real World by John R. Searle | |
Paperback: 192
Pages
(2000-01-01)
list price: US$15.95 -- used & new: US$6.99 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0465045219 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Disillusionment with psychology is leading more and more people toformal philosophy for clues about how to think about life. But most ofus who try to grapple with concepts such as reality, truth, commonsense, consciousness, and society lack the rigorous training todiscuss them with any confidence. John Searle brings these notionsdown from their abstract heights to the terra firma of real-worldunderstanding, so that those with no knowledge of philosophy canunderstand how these principles play out in our everyday lives. Theauthor stresses that there is a real world out there to deal with, andcondemns the belief that the reality of our world is dependent on ourperception of it. "A remarkable feat. This is the book for anyone who wants to learnabout the big philosophical questions."-Owen Flanagan, DukeUniversity "This book is a major event. John Searle has brought together andelucidated forty years of brilliant work on Mind, Language, andSociety. Bravo!"-Jerome Bruner, New York University Customer Reviews (26)
Cutting through all the mumbo jumbo about the mind
Most of the criticisms are apt, but
Searle Summarized
Searle is no scientist.
Excellent and Unorthodox Introduction to Philosophy |
11. The Construction of Social Reality by John R. Searle | |
Paperback: 256
Pages
(1997-01-01)
list price: US$16.95 -- used & new: US$9.42 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0684831791 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Customer Reviews (14)
Nice BOOK
Searle and the Is/Ought gap
Another Gem from Searle
Searle sinks, swims in unknown waters
Searching Under the Street Lamp |
12. Strange but True: A Novel (P.S.) by John Searles | |
Paperback: 308
Pages
(2005-06-01)
list price: US$13.95 -- used & new: US$0.19 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0060721790 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description After a mysterious fall from his Manhattan apartment, Philip Chase has moved home with his mother, Charlene, a bitter woman who has never fully accepted the death ofher younger son, Ronnie, five years earlier. Numb from watching too much TV and trading snipes with his mother, Philip is in stasis. But everything changes one winter night when Ronnie's high school girlfriend shows up on their doorstep to deliver the news that she is pregnant ... and the father, she claims, is Ronnie. So begins the startling tale as Philip and his mother confront Melissa's past and their own. Their search for answers takes them on an emotional journey, placing them in the path of murder and revenge. At once a moving story of redemption and a heart-stopping work of suspense, Strange but True brings to life a cast of characters that no reader will soon forget. Customer Reviews (41)
Loved it.
Need to know
Read it in a day
Much more than just a mystery
Best Book Club Book I Have Ever Read! |
13. Rationality in Action (Jean Nicod Lectures) by John R. Searle | |
Paperback: 319
Pages
(2003-03-01)
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Editorial Review Product Description Customer Reviews (5)
Extraordinary approach to rationality
Lucid and Stimulating I found the section distinguishing reasons for action from justification for action quite interesting.The explanation of what Searle calls "weakness of the will" follows very logically from the rest of his argument and is no problem for his theory of rationality.Finally, Searle touches on the question of neurobiological determinism versus freedom of the will. Anyone who has followed Searle's previous works on intentionality, consciousness, speech acts, and institutional facts will find this as punchy, logical, and clear. All in all, _Rationality in Action_ is an enjoyable work of philosophy.
Excellent and honest
Excellent and honest
Searle's Photo Not on the Front Cover 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. ... Read more |
14. Consciousness and Language by John R. Searle | |
Paperback: 280
Pages
(2002-07-15)
list price: US$35.99 -- used & new: US$12.97 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0521597447 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Customer Reviews (2)
Not a fan, but still very good. 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.
A Superb Collection of Articles... 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... ... Read more |
15. John Searle and his Critics (Philosophers and their Critics) | |
Paperback: 420
Pages
(1993-04-15)
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Editorial Review Product Description |
16. The Rediscovery of the Mind (Representation and Mind) by John R. Searle | |
Paperback: 288
Pages
(1992-07-08)
list price: US$29.00 -- used & new: US$12.08 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 026269154X Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description In this major new work, John Searle launches a formidable attack on current orthodoxies in the philosophy of mind. More than anything else, he argues, it is the neglect of consciousness that results in so much barrenness and sterility in psychology, the philosophy of mind, and cognitive science: there can be no study of mind that leaves out consciousness. Customer Reviews (11)
The Irreducibility of the Mind
Excellent start point
Excellent Highly-Accessible Polemic
Clearest monograph EVER!!!
The study of the mind is the study of consciousness. 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. ... Read more |
17. John Searle (Continuum Contemporary American Thinkers) by Joshua Rust | |
Paperback: 192
Pages
(2009-11-23)
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Editorial Review Product Description |
18. John Searle (Philosophy Now Series) by Nick Fotion | |
Paperback: 256
Pages
(2001-01-01)
list price: US$29.95 -- used & new: US$9.55 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0691057125 Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Nick Fotion explains Searle's ideas in full, while also testing and exploring their implications. He first takes up Searle's philosophy of language, examining how Searle treats speech acts and thinks about the metaphorical use of language. Next, the book sketches Searle's philosophy of mind, including his claims for intentionality and for the centrality of consciousness. This discussion highlights Searle's argument that the mind possesses a subjective character that materialist explanations (including behaviorism and strong artificial intelligence) cannot contain. The author goes on to look at Searle's later writings on the construction of social reality--work that mounts a sophisticated but plainly stated case against deconstructionist, skeptical, and relativistic accounts. Concluding with general reflections on Searle's position vis-à-vis ontology and epistemology, this book is the first to assess and identify common themes and approaches in the whole range of his extensive thought. In doing so, it presents Searle's extremely influential work for the first time as a coherent philosophy. Fotion, a professor of philosophy at Emory University, does an admirable job of limning Searle's philosophical work. Searle first appeared on the philosophical scene in 1969 with the publication of his seminal Speech Acts, which detailed a new theory of how language has meaning. A student of the well-known British philosopher J.L. Austin, Searle elaborated on the importance of intentionality in language use. Of particular interest to a general readership is his latter-day combat with a cohort of intellectual opponents he calls "antirealists." The salvos appeared in his 1995 book The Construction of Social Reality, in which he defends the existence of objects outside our minds. Sound obvious? It's not, according to his adversaries. On this score, and on others, Fotion does a wonderful job of marrying Searle's polemics to his philosophical rigor. --Eric de Place |
19. John Searle and the Construction of Social Reality (Continuum Studies in American Philosophy) by Joshua Rust | |
Hardcover: 224
Pages
(2006-01-25)
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Editorial Review Product Description Customer Reviews (1)
A Critique that Explains Social Facts |
20. John Searle (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus) | |
Paperback: 304
Pages
(2003-08-18)
list price: US$29.99 -- used & new: US$5.00 (price subject to change: see help) Asin: 0521797047 Average Customer Review: Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan | |
Editorial Review Product Description Customer Reviews (1)
So far, I am pleased |
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