Self-Study - 5

Bohdana Boiaryn
PhEb2-16
Task 1: Take notes on:
THE LECTURE J. Searle ‘On the Philosiphy of Language’
The first essay is by Searle himself and it is as clear and unabashed as anything
he has written. He begins with the proclamation that, "The greatest
achievements in philosophy over the past one hundred or hundred and twenty-
five years have been in the philosophy of language"

Searle certainly has made his fair share of contributions to this very important
field. This is especially the case with respect to Searle's work on intentionality
(in the sense of a mental act or state like a belief being about something). As
Searle outlines in his essay, his account of intentionality involves at least three
basic ideas. The connection between the two main sections of the book can be
quite clearly appreciated after reflecting on these principal theses.

 The first central idea regarding intentionality that Searle offers is this:
linguistic intentionality does not merely involve the expression of
propositions and the existence of conditions under which they might or
might not be satisfied, but also requires the association of those
propositions with illocutionary forces of various kinds.

 These illocutionary forces determine the various kinds of speech acts

(asserting, promising, marrying, etc.) that language characteristically
makes possible. The second idea is that mental intentionality also
requires the association of propositions with a variety of kinds of
psychological modes. These psychological modes determine the kinds of
states (desires, intentions, beliefs, expectations, etc.) that possession of a
mind characteristically makes possible.

 The third and final idea is that linguistic meaning is derived from the
communication-driven acquisition of conventional procedures.
According to Searle, the satisfaction conditions that mentally entertained
propositions have under various psychological modes become the
satisfaction conditions that linguistically expressed propositions have
under various kinds of illocutionary forces. So, for example, the
satisfaction conditions of beliefs become the satisfaction conditions of
 assertions; the satisfaction conditions of desires become the satisfaction
conditions of requests;

The next six essays form the part of the collection entitled, "From mind to
meaning." The first half of this part is devoted to the foundation of Searle's
account of the mind -- his analysis of the intentionality of perceptual
experience. François Recanati focuses on Searle's analysis of conscious
perceptual states as these involve a condition of causal self-referentiality (which
is roughly the requirement that, in cases of veridical perception, what is
perceived must be the cause of its own perception

 The following two essays deal with Searle's internalist approach to

intentional content. According to Searle and other internalists, the
intentional content of perceptual experiences consists entirely of
conceptual elements that are produced by the perceiver's mind. In
response to this sort of view, many have argued that since perceptual
experiences put perceivers in relation to particular objects in the world,

 After raising this challenge to Searle's account, Bach offers a possible

way out. He suggests that Searle might simply reject an assumption that
many externalists seem to make (perhaps oddly, Searle seems to share in
this assumption) -- that the only place to account for the particularity of
perceived objects is in the content of the perceptual experiences. As I
remarked, Jeshion takes a different tack.

This is a volume of original essays on key aspects of John Searle's philosophy

of language.

It examines Searle's work in relation to current issues of central significance,

including internalism versus externalism about mental and linguistic content,
truth-conditional versus non-truth-conditional conceptions of content, the
relative priorities of thought and language in the explanation of intentionality,
the status of the distinction between force and sense in the theory of meaning,
the issue of meaning scepticism in relation to rule-following, and the proper
characterization of ‘what is said’ in relation to the semantics/pragmatics
distinction.

Written by a distinguished team of contemporary philosophers, and prefaced by

an illuminating essay by Searle, the volume aims to contribute to a deeper
understanding of Searle's work in philosophy of language, and to suggest
innovative approaches to fundamental questions in that area.