Abstract
John Searle's The Rediscovery of the Min is a sustained attempt to locate the mind and the mental firmly in the realm of the physical. “Consciousness”,claims Searle, “is just an ordinary biological feature of the world ... ” More specifically,“[t]he mental state of consciousness is just an ordinary biological, that is, physical featureof the brain”. Searle is adamant: “Consciousness, to repeat, is a natural biological phenomenon“.
The purpose of this paper is to establish the claim that Searle's version of biologicalnaturalism, articulated in Rediscovery and defended elsewhere, is an incoherent theory of themind. I attempt to make good on this claim by showing (i) that Searle's biologicalnaturalism is committed to four claims which are individually plausible but not possiblefor Searle to hold simultaneously, (ii) that Searle's biological naturalism is, despiteSearle's protests to the contrary, a form of dualism, and therefore (iii) that Searle'sbiological naturalism is enmeshed in the same philosophical tradition from whichSearle claims to be departing, and finally (iv) that Searle's commitment to the jointnotions of nonreductivism and causal closure of the physical domain creates a problemhis theory of the mind lacks the resources to solve plausibly.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Hasker, W.: 2001, ‘Persons as Emergent Substances’, in Kevin Corcoran (ed.),Soul, Body and Survival, Cornell University Press.
Kim, J.: 1995, ‘Mental Causation in Searle'sBiological Naturalism’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55, 189–194.
Kim, J.: 1998,Mind in a Physical World, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Lowe, E. J.: 2001, ‘Identity, Compositionand the Simplicity of the Self’, in Kevin Corcoran (ed.), Soul, Body and Survival, Cornell University Press.
Nagel, T.: 1996, The View From Nowhere, Oxford University Press, chapter 1.
O'Connor, T.: 2001, ‘Causality, Mind and Free Will’, in Kevin Corcoran (ed.), Soul, Body and Survival, Cornell University Press.
Rudder-Baker, L.: 1995, Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind, Cambridge University Press, chapter 6.
Rudder-Baker, L.: 1995, ‘Metaphysics and Mental Causation’, inJohn Heil and Alfred Mele (eds), Mental Causation, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Searle, J.: 1983,Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J.: 1992, TheRediscovery of the Mind, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Searle, J.: 1993, ‘The Myth of Non-ReductiveMaterialism’, reprinted in Supervenience and Mind, Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J.: 1995, ‘Consciousness, the Brain and the Connection Principle: A Reply’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55, 217–232.
Stephan, A.; 1997, ‘Armchair Arguments Against Emergentism’,Erkenntnis 46, 305–314.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Corcoran, K. The Trouble With Searle's Biological Naturalism. Erkenntnis 55, 307–324 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013386105239
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013386105239