{"id":976,"date":"2010-10-19T10:00:07","date_gmt":"2010-10-19T08:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=976"},"modified":"2010-07-22T15:24:14","modified_gmt":"2010-07-22T13:24:14","slug":"john-searle%e2%80%99s-philosophy-of-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=976","title":{"rendered":"John Searle\u2019s philosophy of language"},"content":{"rendered":"
John Searle\u2019s philosophy of language: <\/strong>Force, meaning and mind. <\/strong>Ed. by Savas L. Tsohatzidis<\/strong>. <\/strong>Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. 312. ISBN 9780521685344<\/a>. $31.99.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Kanavillil Rajagopalan<\/strong><\/a>, State University at Campinas, Brazil<\/em><\/p>\n

John Searle is undeniably one of the most important contemporary American philosophers. A glowing tribute to Searle\u2019s contribution to the analytic tradition of the philosophy of language, this edited volume comprises eleven original essays by leading philosophers. The essays are grouped into two parts, \u2018From mind to meaning\u2019 and \u2018From meaning to force\u2019, which represent the two principal themes that have occupied Searle throughout his career. Additionally, an opening chapter by Searle foregrounds what he sees as some of the central issues of philosophy today.<\/p>\n

The first three essays in Part 1 address intentionality, the cornerstone of Searle\u2019s philosophy of mind and language. Although he agrees with Searle on the importance of causal self-referentiality in underwriting conscious perceptual states, in \u2018Content, mode, and self-reference\u2019, Fran\u00e7ois Recanati<\/strong> takes issue with the idea of assigning self-referentiality to the propositional content of the perceptual state rather than to its psychological mode. Kent Bach<\/strong>, \u2018Searle against the world: How can experiences find their objects?\u2019, and Robin Jeshion<\/strong>, \u2018Seeing what is there\u2019, both critique Searle\u2019s efforts to deflate the so-called \u2018particularity objection\u2019 to his internalist analysis of mental content. In \u2018Intentionalism, descriptivism, and proper names\u2019, Wayne A. Davis<\/strong> broadly agrees with Searle\u2019s intentionalist stance on the sense and reference of proper names but argues that intentionalism can only be salvaged from externalist objections if some of its key features are changed. In \u2018On the alleged priority of thought over language\u2019, Christopher Gauker<\/strong> calls into question the widely held assumption that conceptual thought has ontological priority over language. Finally, in \u2018Rule skepticism: Searle\u2019s criticism of Kripke\u2019s Wittgenstein\u2019, Martin Kusch concludes that Searle has failed to make his case against Saul Kripke\u2019s interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein\u2019s views on rule following.<\/p>\n

Kepa Korta<\/strong> and John Perry<\/strong>\u2019s \u2018How to say things with words\u2019 opens Part 2. Korta and Perry explore how propositional content\u2014distinct from illocutionary force\u2014is standardly characterized in the literature and offer a multipropositional conception. Stephen J. Barker<\/strong>, \u2018Semantics without the distinction between sense and force\u2019, and Nicholas Asher<\/strong>, \u2018Dynamic discourse semantics for embedded speech acts\u2019 both contest the time-honored wisdom, embraced by Searle, that propositional content is altogether different from illocutionary force, although Barker and Asher develop their arguments on entirely different grounds. In \u2018Yes-no questions and the myth of content invariance\u2019, Savas L. Tsohatzidis disputes Searle\u2019s claim that a yes<\/em>\/no<\/em> question, and its grammatically corresponding assertion, both have propositional content. Finally, Mitchell Green<\/strong> asks \u2018How do speech acts express psychological states?\u2019. Green contests the universality of Searle\u2019s claim that for an illocutionary act to be deemed sincere, it must express the speaker\u2019s mental state.<\/p>\n

This volume, which is a testament to the vitality of Searle\u2019s philosophy, is certain to be of interest to philosophers and linguists who are interested in the role of intentionality in the explanation of speech acts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Searle\u2019s philosophy of language: Force, meaning and mind. Ed. by Savas L. Tsohatzidis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. 312. ISBN 9780521685344. $31.99. Reviewed by Kanavillil Rajagopalan, State University at Campinas, Brazil John Searle is undeniably one of the most important contemporary American philosophers. A glowing tribute to Searle\u2019s contribution to the analytic tradition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":977,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}