Philosopher John Searle on Perception, Mind, Matter & Consciousness
One of America’s most prominent philosophers says his field has been tilting at windmills for nearly 400 years. Representationalism – the idea that we don’t directly perceive objects in the world, only our mental images of them – has bedeviled philosophy ever since Descartes, and now it’s mucking up neuroscience as well, John Searle alleges. John has long defended the “naïve” alternative – that our senses do give us direct access to reality – and he fires his latest salvo in his new book Seeing Things as They Are.
John is renowned for his plainspoken, no-nonsense approach to philosophical problems that are sometimes treated as borderline ineffable, and our interview was mostly non-technical. Topics include:
- The “Bad Argument” that has bamboozled so many philosophers and scientists
- Subjectivity vs objectivity
- Misleading distinctions between physical and mental
- Hallucinations and perceptual errors
- The scientific study of consciousness
- Why machines don’t think, but John’s dog Tarski does
- Cultivating naivety
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I asked John where his best ideas come from, and he told me about his theory of intentionality, conceived in a bathtub and hastily typed up in his garden. Those early inklings, now framed on his office wall, gave rise to his book Intentionality.
“If you want to see a conscious dog, come to my house at dinnertime”: John’s bernese mountain dog Tarski, named after the late, great logician Alfred Tarski.