Searle John R. Consciousness and Language

Cambridge University Press, 2002. — 269 p. ISBN: 0 521 59237 2; ISBN: 0 521 59744 7A new book (2002) by one of the most prominent American thinkers and philosophers, the founder of the speech act theory, dwelling upon the problem of consciousness, intentionality, collective intentions and actions, social phenomena.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.