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Thinker · TH-0251

John Searle

John Searle was an American philosopher who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, for most of his career. He developed speech act theory,…

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Also known as John Rogers Searle

1932 – 2025 · Denver; Madison, Wisconsin; Oxford; Berkeley, California

Traditions: Analytic

John Searle was an American philosopher who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, for most of his career. He developed speech act theory, including a taxonomy of illocutionary acts, and his Chinese room argument held that running a program cannot by itself produce understanding. In social ontology he explained institutional facts like money through collective intentionality, arguing that primitive we-intentions are irreducible to I-intentions while still residing in individual minds, with no group mind required.

Key ideas

  • Illocutionary acts fall into five basic kinds: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives and declarations.
  • The Chinese room: syntax is not sufficient for semantics, so a program alone cannot understand.
  • Institutional facts take the form 'X counts as Y in context C', as when paper counts as money.
  • Collective intentions ('we intend') are primitive, though they exist only in individual minds.

Major works

  • Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (1969)
  • "Minds, Brains, and Programs" (1980, Behavioral and Brain Sciences)
  • Intentionality (1983)
  • The Construction of Social Reality (1995)

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