John Searle : Le courant analytique, dans lequel je me situe, est pour une large part un ensemble de réactions à l’oeuvre de Gottlob Frege. Nous ne faisons que commencer à prendre la mesure de l’importance considérable de Frege, non seulement pour ce qui est de ses propres théories, mais aussi des directions de recherches qu’il a fourni à Russell, à Wittgenstein, et à Austin, qui fut mon professeur à Oxford.1 Donc, en un sens, j’appartiens à la révolution (...) fregéenne. A première vue, cette révolution consiste en la réinvention de la logique : Frege a créé.. (shrink)

In Neutrality and the Academic Ethic, distinguished philosopher Robert L. Simon explores the claim that universities can and should be politically neutral. He examines conceptual questions about the meaning of neutrality, distinguishes different conceptions of what neutrality involves, and considers in what sense, if any, institutional neutrality is both possible and desirable. In Part II, a collection of original and previously published essays provides different views on these and related issues.

This chapter contains sections titled: The theory of speech acts Ordinary language philosophy: the constructive function Ordinary language philosophy: the critical function Other works Character and intellect Conclusion.

Felsefenin durumu ve geleceği üzerine genel bir derin düşünme çoğu kez yüzeysellik ve entelektüel bir tatminkârlık ile sonuçlanmaktadır. Üstelik takvimde rastgele bir an olan yeni yüzyılın başlamasının kendisi bile, bu tür düşünmeler ile meşgul olmaya karşı genel bir varsayımı geçersiz kılmak için yeterli gibi görünmüyor. Bununla birlikte ciddi bir risk olmasına rağmen, felsefenin şimdiki ve gelecek durumu üzerine bir şeyler söyleme riskini kabul edeceğim. Konu içerisindeki önemli kapsamlı değişimlerin birkaçı, benim yaşam sürecimde ortaya çıktı ve ben onların, konunun geleceği açısından (...) yol açtıkları olanaklılıkları ve önemlerini tartışmak istiyorum. (shrink)

Pour Searle, parler une langue, c'est adopter un comportement, accomplir des actes de langage selon des règles complexes dont l'étude rejoint une théorie de l'action. Cette recherche est complémentaire des travaux de Chomsky, dans la mesure où ce dernier écarte de sa description de la langue le contexte extra-linguistique et même la fonction de communication, essentielle pour Searle : ignorer l'emploi des mots, c'est ignorer le langage lui-même.

Psikoloji, nörobiyoloji, felsefe ve diğer pek çok disiplinde benliğe ilişkin çok sayıda farklı problemler var. Nörobiyolojide, çalışılan benlik problemlerinin pek çoğunun patolojinin çeşitli formlarıyla ilgili olduğu izlenimine sahibim –dürüstlükteki sorunlar, tutarlılık veya benliğin işlevi. Bu patolojiler hakkında söyleyecek hiçbir şeyim yok çünkü neredeyse onlar hakkında hiçbir şey bilmiyorum. Ben bu patolojilere yalnızca ayrık-beyin hastaları gibi doğrudan benliğin problemleriyle ilgiliyseler değineceğim.

Part 1 of this exchange consists in a critique by Smith of Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality focusing on Searle’s use of the formula ‘X counts as Y in context C’. Smith argues that this formula works well for social objects such as dollar bills and presidents where the corresponding X terms (pieces of paper, human beings) are easy to identify. In cases such as debts and prices and money in a banks computers, however, the formula fails, (...) because these are cases of what he calls ‘free-standing Y terms’, since there is here no X which can count as the corresponding Y. In his response in Part 2, Searle argues that Smith’s critique rests on three misunderstandings: 1. in wrongly presupposing that Searle is trying to analyze the nature of what he calls “social objects”, rather than of social facts; 2. in thinking that the counts as formula is intended as a definition, rather than as a mere mnemonic; and 3. in neglecting the naturalism of Searle’s account. (shrink)

The article proposes a comparison between certain aspects of Samuel Pufendorf's (1632-1694) conception of natural law and certain aspects of John Searle's social ontology. As in Pufendorf the entia moralia are superimposed on the entia physica, of which they constitute modes that ground systems of norms (natural or positive), so in Searle the institutional facts that are created by certain speech acts of the performative type are superimposed on the physical facts. The difference between Pufendorf and (...) class='Hi'>Searle is that the latter understands all institutional facts as extrinsic to the physical facts (as a consequence of the peculiarity of their self-referentiality). For Pufendorf, on the other hand, moral modes are intrinsic to certain entia physica endowed with reason and will, whereas certain legal relations, like property, are extrinsic. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Semantic Engines: An Introduction to Mind Design, John C. Haugeland; Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search, Alan Newell and Herbert A. Simon; Complexity and the Study of Artificial and Human Intelligence, Zenon Pylyshyn; A Framework for Representing Knowledge, Marvin Minsky; Artificial Intelligence---A Personal View, David Marr; Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity, Drew McDermott; From Micro-Worlds to Knowledge Representation: AI at an Impasse, Hubert L. Dreyfus; Reductionism and the Nature of Psychology, Hilary Putnam; Intentional Systems, Daniel C. Dennett; (...) The Nature and Plausibility of Cognitivism, John C. Haugeland; Minds, Brains, and Programs, John R. Searle; MethodologicalSolipsism Considered as a Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology, Jerry A. Fodor; The Material Mind, Donald Davidson. (shrink)

Intentionality, as Brentano originally introduced the term in modern philosophy, was meant to provide a distinctive characteristic definitively separating the mental from the physical.(1) Mental states have an intrinsic relationship to an object, to that which they are "about." Physical entities just are what they are, they cannot, by their very essence, refer to anything, they have no "outreach", as one might put it. Mental states have, as it were, an incomplete essence, they cannot exist at all unless they are (...) completed by something other than themselves, their object. Brentano's position is opposed to all theories which represent the mental as only extrinsically related to the world, that is, to all theories in which mental states are themselves self-sufficient for their own existence and only secondarily relate to the world by means of something external to their nature, e.g., neurological causation, divine intervention, or pre-established harmony. In these later cases, any mental act whatsoever could be related to any object, or indeed to none, for the relation is external to the nature of the act, it is superimposed on it by outside forces. Brentano's point is that a mental act has, by its very essence, an Intentional object without which it would not be a mental act. It would therefore appear that since causality is an external relationship which could in principle relate any two things regardless of their nature, the Intentional relation between an act and its object cannot be a causal relation. (shrink)

This book includes ten original essays that critically examine central themes of John Searle’s ontology of society, as well as a new essay by Searle that summarizes and further develops his work in that area. The critical essays are grouped into three parts. Part I (Aspects of Collective Intentionality) examines the account of collective intention and action underlying Searle’s analysis of social and institutional facts, with special emphasis on how that account relates to the dispute between (...) individualism and anti-individualism in the analysis of social behaviour, and to the opposition between internalism and externalism in the analysis of intentionality. Part II (From Intentions to Institutions: Development and Evolution) scrutinizes the ontogenetic and phylogenetic credentials of Searle’s view that, unlike other kinds of social facts, institutional facts are uniquely human, and develops original suggestions concerning their place in human evolution and development. Part III (Aspects of Institutional Reality) focuses on Searle’s claim that institutional facts owe their existence to the collective acceptance of constitutive rules whose effect is the creation of deontic powers, and examines central issues relevant to its assessment (among others, the status of the distinction between regulative and constitutive rules, the significance of the distinction between brute and deontic powers, the issue of the logical derivability of normative from descriptive propositions, and the import of the difference between moral and non-moral normative principles). Written by an international team of philosophers and social scientists, the essays aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle’s work on the ontology of society, and to suggest new approaches to fundamental questions in that research area. (shrink)

This collection should be welcomed by anyone working on the subtle interplay between theories of perception, internalism and externalism about mental and linguistic content, and the linguistic expression of mental states. Many of these connections have been put into focus by John Searle, and his views are here subjected to careful scrutiny from a variety of directions. The contributions do not sum to a general discussion of Searle's contributions to the philosophy of mind and language. There is (...) little or nothing here on, for example, the Chinese rooms and Strong AI, or on his more recent work on social construction and rationality. Such absences are an inevitable consequence of the sheer number of influential theses Searle has advanced over the decades. Instead, the locus of discussion is the systematic perspective most clearly set out in his work , a fact that lends integrity to the volume.The book is divided into two main parts, with inevitable links across the divide. The first is concerned with the intentionality of mental states, and the second with the intentionality of linguistic acts. The first kind of intentionality is, according to Searle, intrinsic, while the second is inherited from the first, with linguistic conventions affording the derivation. The two kinds of intentionality parallel one another …. (shrink)

Philosophers disagree, with some rare exceptions. One of those exceptions is the broadest-brush account of what language is. Language is a system of signs used for the communication of --well, and here the agreement begins to break down--thoughts, ideas, messages, propositions or propositional contents, intentions, and a host of technical terms offer themselves to chink the cracks. A list of philosophers subscribing would be impossible to complete. Locke, Carnap, Augustine, Hobbes, Fodor, Katz, Chomsky, Derrida, --well, and on and on. Easier (...) would be to list those who dissent. Heraclitus, Wittgenstein, maybe J.L. Austin, Frank Ebersole, and NOT on and on. The first chapter lays out the view that language is a system of signs in sympathetic terms. The second provides a selection of what are usually called “ordinary language” arguments against the view--reminders about how the view requires us to think in terms which are not consistent with how we think about language and signs when we are not doing philosophy. Those arguments have been unpersuasive among philosophers, and Chapter Three begins the work of investigating separate pieces of the view in detail. Chapter Three takes up an argument for the view which is familiar among philosophers, using Jerry Fodor’s formulation: we cannot be thinking in a public, natural language, because animals and preverbal infants think with no such language. I show this argument is not an argument at all but is rather an expression of the view in question. Chapter Four takes up the argument that the relations between particular words and their meanings is arbitrary or conventional rather than natural or necessary, otherwise there would be only one language among mankind. I argue that the alternatives (conventional vs. natural or necessary) are both generated by taking the division between words and their meanings to be the division between signs and signified--in other words, the question is a result of adopting the view of language as signs. Attempts to argue for the legitimacy of the question without taking the view for granted only serve to call it into question more. In Chapter Five I investigate whether we talk in order to communicate something which is otherwise hidden and invisible. We are tempted to think that you and I talk because I cannot read your mind or you mine. Though Wittgenstein has a famous set of comments on the notion of a private language, it remains a strong temptation to think that language gives public form to something (thoughts, ideas, intentions, feelings, content, meaning) which without language would be unknowable to all but the person whose something it is. Examples help point to the incoherence of this view and show that even if it were not incoherent, remedying the invisibility of those internal whatnots would still leave us with a need for language. Chapter Six takes up a hoary question about boundaries of effability--the possibility that there are limits to what can be said which are more restrictive than what can be thought or felt. The account of language as signs provides one easy way to make sense of this idea, but investigation into examples shows the problem is not one that makes sense unless we just grant that account. Chapter Seven investigates how to make sense of the notion that there are things which are in language and other things which are not. I spell out how the view of language as signs gives us a way to think this, and then show how one reaction to finding problems with the notion resonates with Wittgenstein’s early work and with some work of Jacques Derrida, who bite similar bullets and agree that everything is language, that the limits of language are the limits of our world. I then subject that reaction to critical investigation using examples, which reveals their reaction as a rear-guard attempt to save the view of language as signs. Chapter Eight uses examples as guides toward alternative views of language, feeling our way toward what language might be if it is not a system of signs. Finally, the appendix takes up what I take to be the serious arguments against the methods I use in this work, the first two articulated by John Searle (“the assertion fallacy”) and H. P. Grice (“conversational implicature”), and another the generally unspoken belief that philosophical work is like scientific work. (shrink)

John Searle upholds the idea of a “background” of intentionality. In his view there is an ensemble of non-representational (or non-intentional) mental capacities that make every form of intentionality possible (that is to say, without these mental capacities there would not be any beliefs, desires, intentions, etc.). I examine both his reasons to believe that there are non-representational mental capacities and the arguments he gives in support of the most important claim (according to him) that an intentional state (...) cannot be this particular state unless the said “background” existe. (shrink)

Naturalism, the purported derivation of values from facts, is a fallacy which stubbornly persists despite all attempts to root it out. And nowadays the naturalists seem to be getting the upper hand. It has become a commonplace of contemporary thinking, both in ethics and the philosophy of science , that the fact-value distinction has ‘broken down’. As early as 1955, J. L. Austin spoke disparagingly of the ‘fact/value fetish’; three years later, Philippa Foot referred to the ‘disappearance’ of the logical (...) gap between factual premises and moral conclusions. In the following decade, Jonathan Cohen baldly asserted that ‘the statement/evaluation dichotomy is erroneous’; and John Searle produced a famous paper which set out to demolish the ‘alleged’ and ‘not very useful’ distinction between descriptive and evaluative utterances. More recently we find Benjamin Gibbs telling us that the ‘positivist doctrine of a fact-value dichtomy’ is ‘only a sort of myth’; while Richard Rorty asserts that the ‘positivist distinction between facts and values’ is based on a ‘philosophical fiction’. Finally, Roy Bhaskar goes so far as to pronounce that ‘the transition from “is” to “ought”, factual to value statements, indicatives to imperatives’ is ‘not only acceptable but mandatory’ ! (shrink)

Hauser considers John Searle's attempt to distinguish acts from movements. On Searle's account, the difference between me raising my arm and my arm's just going up (e.g., if you forcibly raise it), is the causal involvement of my intention to raise my arm in the former, but not the latter, case. Yet, we distinguish a similar difference between a robot's raising its arm and its robot arm just going up (e.g., if you manually raise it). Either robots (...) are rightly credited with intentions or it's not intention that distinguishes action from mere movement. In either case acts are attributable to robots. Since the truth of such attributions depends not on the speaker's "intentional stance" but on "intrinsic" features of the things they are not merely figurative "as if" attributions. Gunderson allows that internally propelled programmed devices (Hauser Robots) do act but denies that they have the mental properties such acts seem to indicate. Rather, given our intuitive conviction that these machines lack consciousness, such performances evidence the dementalizability of acts.Hauser replies that the performances in question provide prima facie warrant for attributions of mental properties that considerations of consciousness are insufficient to override. (shrink)

[Herbert F.] Tucker has shown us in a very practical way that the concept of meaning is the problem of problems, not only in hermeneutics but in literary theory and, indeed, literary study generally. It may well be that in literary study there can be no talk of meaning that is not ambiguous, that does not require us to speak in figures or by means of metaphorical improvisations. It would not necessarily follow that our talk of meaning is merely provisional (...) or without philosophical authority since we know now that considerable authority attaches to ordinary language, whence we obtain our use of the word "meaning" as well as the figurations that we use to talk our way around it. To be sure, the discipline of literary study is now rapidly filling with grave masters who take our figures to mean that meaning is literally unspeakable—only so many transferences and substitutions within a system of differences alarmingly vast . This is itself a terrific idea, or a terrific figure, although it is used mainly to expose the thoughtless way we talk about meaning as well as our offhand assumptions about the conditions that make understanding possible. Our problem in literary study is not that meaning is unspeakable—even if it were it would not be a problem—but that we rarely reflect on the subject of meaning in a disciplined way. In our time, meaning as a topic of study is the preserve of logicians. It is almost exclusively a theme of analytical philosophy, and even those not bound by this philosophy address themselves to the analytical tradition when they speak of meaning.1 It is time that we entered into this discourse on meaning; a paper as fine as Tucker's should serve as a summons.· 1. Among numerous cases, see John R. Searle, "Metaphor" and "Literal Meaning," Expression and Meaning , pp. 76-136, and "Intentionality and the Use of Language," in Meaning and Use, ed. Avishai Margalit , pp. 181-97.Gerald l. Bruns, professor of English at the University of Iowa, is the author of Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language and Inventions: Writing, Textuality, and Interpretation in Literary History. (shrink)

This article undertakes a comparative examination of the social ontologies, or theories of civilization, proposed by John Searle and Ibn Khaldun. It suggests that a careful juxtaposition of Searle and Ibn Khaldun's social ontologies yields complementary perspectives on the emergence and nature of social reality. They both delineate a distinction between two categories of entities: human-independent and human-dependent. The former makes up the natural world, while the latter constitutes the social world. Both scholars attempt to understand the (...) second category of entities, which Searle refers to as human civilization and Ibn Khaldun calls ʿumrān. Although Searle and Ibn Khaldun share a common understanding regarding the importance of human activity in shaping social reality, their perspectives diverge when it comes to elucidating the mechanisms behind this phenomenon. Does the social world arise primarily from cognitive processes, or is it predominantly a consequence of linguistic expressions and speech acts? Searle asserts that language forms the basis of social reality, whereas Ibn Khaldun puts forth a social ontology based on reason. While Ibn Khaldun's social ontology explains the construction of tangible social entities such as buildings, Searle's theory can explain how is it that a mere physical structure transforms into an epistemologically objective fact—a university. Ultimately, this paper suggests that viewing the social world through the lenses of these two theories provides an intriguing and holistic perspective. This article suggests that the juxtaposition of these two ontological frameworks enriches our comprehension of the processes that give rise to the ontological-physical and epistemological-institutional dimensions of social entities. (shrink)

John Searle (1932-) is one of the most famous living American philosophers. A pupil of J. L. Austin at Oxford in the 1950s, he is currently Mills Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1995 John Searle published "The Construction of Social Reality", a text which not only promises to disclose the institutional backdrop against which speech takes place, but initiate a new 'philosophy of society'. Since then "The (...) Construction of Social Reality" has been subject to a flurry of criticism. While many of Searle's interlocutors share the sense that the text marks an important breakthrough, he has time and again accused critics of misunderstanding his claims. Despite Searle's characteristic crispness and clarity there remains some confusion, among both philosophers and sociologists, regarding the significance of his proposals. This book traces some of the high points of this dialogue, leveraging Searle's own clarifications to propose a new way of understanding the text. In particular, Joshua Rust looks to Max Weber in suggesting that Searle has articulated an ideal type. In locating The Construction of Social Reality under the umbrella of one of sociology's founding fathers, this book not only makes Searle's text more accessible to the readers in the social sciences, but presents Max Weber as a thinker worthy of philosophical reconsideration. Moreover, the recharacterization of Searle's claims in terms of the ideal type helps facilitate a comparison between Searle and other social theorists such as Talcott Parsons. (shrink)

This collection should be welcomed by anyone working on the subtle interplay between theories of perception, internalism and externalism about mental and linguistic content, and the linguistic expression of mental states. Many of these connections have been put into focus by John Searle, and his views are here subjected to careful scrutiny from a variety of directions. The contributions do not sum to a general discussion of Searle's contributions to the philosophy of mind and language. There is (...) little or nothing here on, for example, the Chinese rooms and Strong AI, or on his more recent work on social construction and rationality. Such absences are an inevitable consequence of the sheer number of influential theses Searle has advanced over the decades. Instead, the locus of discussion is the systematic perspective most clearly set out in his work, a fact that lends integrity to the volume.The book is divided into two main parts, with inevitable links across the divide. The first is concerned with the intentionality of mental states, and the second with the intentionality of linguistic acts. The first kind of intentionality is, according to Searle, intrinsic, while the second is inherited from the first, with linguistic conventions affording the derivation. The two kinds of intentionality parallel one another …. (shrink)

Stephen Morse seems to have adopted a controversial position regarding the mindbody relationship: John Searle’s non-reductivism, which claims that conscious mental states are causal yet not reducible to their underlying brain states. Searle’s position has been roundly criticized, with some arguing the theory taken as a whole is incoherent. In this paper I review these criticisms and add my own, concluding that Searle’s position is indeed contradictory, both internally and with regard to Morse's other views. Thus (...) I argue that Morse ought to abandon Searle’s non-reductive theory. Instead, I claim Morse ought to adopt a non-eliminative reductive account that can more easily support his realism about folk psychological states, and the existence of causally effective mental states in a purely physical world. (shrink)

John Searle est l'un des plus grands philosophes contemporains. Tout au long d'une trajectoire intellectuelle originale, il a forgé des concepts analytiques ingénieux dont la portée dépasse le cadre de la philosophie puisqu'il vise à inscrire dans une même armature naturaliste le langage, l'esprit et la société. Il manquait au lecteur curieux un guide susceptible de l'orienter dans cette oeuvre, plus complexe qu'il n'y paraît. Un des objectifs du Monde selon Searle est précisément d'introduire et d'illustrer, dans (...) un langage accessible aux non-spécialistes, l'architecture conceptuelle et les enjeux de ses réflexions. Mais il ne s'agit pas seulement d'un ouvrage introductif ; Fabrice Clément et Laurence Kaufmann adoptent une posture critique par rapport à un système de pensée fondamentalement individualiste qui fait du monde social et du rapport à autrui une option facultative. (shrink)

John Searle claims that reasoning requires libertarian free will. He hopes this can be reconciled with a naturalistic neuroscience through a sophisticated theory of emergence, which includes indeterminism, and topdown causation. This is allegedly naturalistic because each mental state is causally reducible to a realizing neuronal state. I argue that Searle’s theory fails to overcome four main problems and cannot account for reasoning without implicit appeal to nonnaturalistic entities.

Raoul Moati intervenes in the critical debate that divided two prominent philosophers in the mid-twentieth century. In the 1950s, the British philosopher J. L. Austin advanced a theory of speech acts, or the "performative," that Jacques Derrida and John R. Searle interpreted in fundamentally different ways. Their disagreement centered on the issue of intentionality, which Derrida understood phenomenologically and Searle read pragmatically. The controversy had profound implications for the development of contemporary philosophy, which, Moati argues, can profit (...) greatly by returning to this classic debate. In this book, Moati systematically replays the historical encounter between Austin, Derrida, and Searle and the disruption that caused the lasting break between Anglo-American language philosophy and continental traditions of phenomenology and its deconstruction. The key issue, Moati argues, is not whether "intentionality," a concept derived from Husserl's phenomenology, can or cannot be linked to Austin's speech-acts as defined in his groundbreaking _How to Do Things with Words_, but rather the emphasis Searle placed on the performativity and determined pragmatic values of Austin's speech-acts, whereas Derrida insisted on the trace of writing behind every act of speech and the iterability of signs in different contexts. (shrink)

Phenomenology and philosophy of mind can be defined either as disciplines or as historical traditions—they are both. As disciplines: phenomenology is the study of conscious experience as lived, as experienced from the first-person point of view, while philosophy of mind is the study of mind—states of belief, perception, action, etc.—focusing especially on the mind–body problem, how mental activities are related to brain activities. As traditions or literatures: phenomenology features the writings of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Roman (...) Ingarden, Aron Gurwitsch, and many others, while philosophy of mind includes the writings of Gilbert Ryle, David Armstrong, Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Paul Churchland and Patricia Smith Churchland, and many others. Historically, philosophy of mind has been considered part of the wider tradition called analytic philosophy, while phenomenology has been considered part of the wider tradition called continental philosophy. But all that is changing as we write, and the present volume is designed to express the change. (shrink)

Raoul Moati intervenes in the critical debate that divided two prominent philosophers in the mid-twentieth century. In the 1950s, the British philosopher J. L. Austin advanced a theory of speech acts, or the "performative," that Jacques Derrida and John R. Searle interpreted in fundamentally different ways. Their disagreement centered on the issue of intentionality, which Derrida understood phenomenologically and Searle read pragmatically. The controversy had profound implications for the development of contemporary philosophy, which, Moati argues, can profit (...) greatly by returning to this classic debate. In this book, Moati systematically replays the historical encounter between Austin, Derrida, and Searle and the disruption that caused the lasting break between Anglo-American language philosophy and continental traditions of phenomenology and its deconstruction. The key issue, Moati argues, is not whether "intentionality," a concept derived from Husserl's phenomenology, can or cannot be linked to Austin's speech-acts as defined in his groundbreaking _How to Do Things with Words_, but rather the emphasis Searle placed on the performativity and determined pragmatic values of Austin's speech-acts, whereas Derrida insisted on the trace of writing behind every act of speech and the iterability of signs in different contexts. (shrink)

There was a long tradition in philosophy according to which good reasoning had to be deductively valid. However, that tradition began to be questioned in the 1960’s, and is now thoroughly discredited. What caused its downfall was the recognition that many familiar kinds of reasoning are not deductively valid, but clearly confer justification on their conclusions. Here are some simple examples.

A theory of rational choice is a theory of how an agent should, rationally, go about deciding what actions to perform at any given time. For example, I may want to decide whether to go to a movie this evening or stay home and read a book. The actions between which we want to choose are perfectly ordinary actions, and the presumption is that to make such a decision we should attend to the likely consequences of our decision. It is (...) assumed that these decisions must be made in the face of uncertainty regarding both the agent’s initial situation and the consequences of his actions. (shrink)