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There are clear cases in which "understanding" literally applies and clear cases in which it does not apply; and these two sorts of cases are all I need for this argument.
John Searle
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I have only one real message in this lecture, and that is: consciousness is a biological phenomenon, like photosynthesis, digestion, mitosis—you know all the biological phenomena—and once you accept that, most, if not all about the hard problems of consciousness simply evaporate.
John Searle
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In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.
John Searle
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The assertion fallacy... is the fallacy of confusing the conditions for the performance of the speech act of assertion with the analysis of the meaning of particular words occurring in certain assertions.
John Searle
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I want to block some common misunderstandings about "understanding": In many of these discussions one finds a lot of fancy footwork about the word "understanding."
John Searle
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The sense in which an automatic door "understands instructions" from its photoelectric cell is not at all the sense in which I understand English.
John Searle
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We do not live in several different, or even two different, worlds, a mental world and a physical world, a scientific world and a world of common sense. Rather, there is just one world; it is the world we all live in, and we need to account for how we exist as part of it.
John Searle
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I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing.
John Searle
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Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.
John Searle
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Well, what does good mean anyway...? As Wittgenstein suggested, good, like game, has a family of meanings. Prominent among them is this one: meets the criteria or standards of assessment or evaluation.
John Searle
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Nowadays nobody bothers, and it is considered in slightly bad taste to even raise the question of God's existence. Matters of religion are like matters of sexual preference: they are not discussed in public, and even the abstract questions are discussed only by bores.
John Searle
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You need to know enough of the natural sciences so that you are not a stranger in the world.
John Searle
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Quote of the day
True, the initial ideas are in general those of an individual, but the establishment of the reality and truth is in general the work of more than one person.
Willard Libby
John Searle
Creative Commons
Born:
July 31, 1932
(age 91)
Bio:
John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.
Known for:
The Construction of Social Reality (1995)
The Mystery of Consciousness (1990)
The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992)
Minds, Brains, and Programs (1984)
Most used words:
sense
understand
intentionality
consciousness
speech
language
simulation
problem
existence
car
understanding
fallacy
cases
phenomenon
computer
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