Organon F , international journal of analytic philosophy Volume 19 (2012), Supplementary Issue 2 Philosophy of John Searle Juraj Hvorecký – Petr Koťátko (Guest Editors) Contents Introduction: John Searle in Czech Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 J . Searle: Perceptual Intentionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 I. Ontology L . Zámečník: External Realism as a Non-Epistemic Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 T . marvan: Searle on External Realism and “Priviledged Conceptual Scheme” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 V . Havlík: Searle on Emergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 II. Philosophy of mind M . Pokorný: Sentience, Awareness, Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 J . Hvorecký: Freedom of Will and Determinism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 T . Hříbek: Thoughtful Brutes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 P . Toráčová: Intentionality and What We Can Learn About It from Searle’s Theory of Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 P . koťáTko: Searle’s Defence of Internalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 III. Philosophy of language Z . ZvolensZky: Searle on Analyticity, Necessity and Proper Names . . . 109 M . nagy: Proper Names and their Place in Social Ontology . . . . . . . . . . 137 V . gvoždiak: John Searle’s Theory of Sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 T . koblížek: How to Make the Concepts Clear: Searle’s Discussion with Derrida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 IV. Fictional discourse, metaphors J . koTen: Searle’s Approach to Fiction: Extending the Concept to Other Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 J . TlusTý: Fictional and Factual Autobiography from the Perspective of Speech Act Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 J . Mácha: Searle on Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 J. Searle: Reply to Commentators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Dagmar and John Searle, Karlovy Vary Symposium on Meaning, September 1993. Introduction: John Searle in Czech Context In the seventies, when the university teaching and official publica- tion policy in Czechoslovakia admitted only one philosophical orienta- tion, numerous Czech and Slovak linguists intensively studied analytic philosophy of language and worked with its conceptual apparatus . The main interest focused, quite naturally, on the works by John Austin and John Searle. For many philosophy students of that time, the first encounter with the analytic philosophy has been mediated by debates among linguists (in more or less closed circles): the role of the initiating work was then typically played by John Searle’s Speech Acts and some of his articles later collected in Searle (1979) .1 Meeting their admired author in person during his repeated visits to the Czech Republic since the early nineties was an exceptionally in- spiring (and most pleasing) experience for all these scholars .2 The visits started with a unique series of lectures in May 1991 held at various Prague philosophical and linguistic departments, with topics ranging from the state of the US philosophical scene through fundamental is- sues of contemporary philosophical debates (like rule-following or the realism-antirealism dispute) to special questions of joint interest for linguists and philosophers of language (like the status and functions of explicit performatives) .3 The impact of these lectures and debates with John Searle (together with his philosophical writings) on the formation and development of Czech analytic philosophical thought has been enormous and the interest they have attracted among Czech philosophers and linguists 1 Among many others, this was the case of one of the editors of this volume . This is perhaps the right opportunity to mention the linguistic seminar held in the early seventies at the Faculty of Philosophy in Brno, focusing on de- tailed work with John Searle’s definitions of speech acts. The seminar was led by Mirek Čejka, probably the most competent Czech interpreter of John Searle’s and John Austin’s work during the so called “normalization” pe- riod . 2 We are especially pleased to add that these visits gave us the opportunity to get acquainted also with John Searle’s wife Dagmar . 3 The text of the lecture ‘Is There a Problem About Realism?’ appeared in Searle (1992) . Organon F 19 (2012), 3-7 © 2012 The Author. Journal compilation © 2012 Institute of Philosophy SAS 4______________________________________________________________ Introduction continued in the following years .4 It culminated during John Searle’s visits to Prague and Ústí nad Labem in May 2011 and June 2012 .5 The hopelessly overcrowded Conference Centre of the Prague’s Institute of Philosophy has hosted his lecture on The Intentionality of Visual Perception (whose transcription appears in this volume) and, one year later, on Language and Social Ontology. Both lectures have been followed by workshops devoted to John Searle’s philosophical work . The papers presented during them, or on the Searlean colloquium in Ústí nad Labem, gave rise to the idea of this volume . Several other papers appeared after this plan became commonly known . Honestly speaking, it is hard to imagine that we could collect so many original Czech articles related to the work of any other philosopher of our times . The range of the material presented in this volume illustrates (at least partially and rather selectively) how profound and manifold is the impact of John Searle’s work on Czech philosophers, linguists and literary theorists .6 It is not difficult to say what the reasons for such an enormous in- terest are. The first is, obviously, the indisputable significance and ex- ceptionally wide thematic scope of John Searle’s work . You can hardly understand (and even less participate in) contemporary debates on meaning, reference, communication (in its “ordinary” forms as well as in rather specific ones, such as the fictional discourse or the highly “rit- ualized” use of language within the operation of various institutions), on the nature of intentionality, consciousness, artificial intelligence, so- cial reality and its institutions etc ., unless you are familiar with John Searle’s views on these matters . Second, these views are presented with precision and clarity which can serve as a paradigm of the virtues typi- cally proclaimed (but not always observed) by analytic philosophers . As a consequence, the author’s statements, arguments and theoretical constructions are highly transparent and directly open to critical exam- 4 Most of these visits have been organized by the Center for Theoretical Study and initiated by its head Ivan M . Havel . Papers presented at the colloquium on John Searle’s philosophy organized by the Center appeared, together with others, in Smith (2003) . 5 Both visits have been organized by Josef Moural from the Philosophical Faculty of J. Ev. Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem . 6 As a special bonus for the reader, we have included (with great pleasure) also a paper by our Budapest colleague Zsofia Zvolenszky, which has been presented at the Prague workshop on John Searle’s philosophy in June 2012 . Introduction ______________________________________________________________5 ination; moreover, the concepts and distinctions introduced by him in this manner into a theoretical discourse find immediately an operative application as instruments of philosophical analysis . Those who appreciate philosophy as a unique opportunity for speaking about unspeakable will not be impressed by these virtues . For analytic philosophers, on the contrary, they should count as a cri- terion for seriousness of any theoretical work as well as of the author’s respect to the reader . Our respect to John Searle and his work gave rise to this volume and the authors did their best to do justice to values they find most convincingly exemplified in his way of doing philosophy. They have not found a better way of expressing their appreciation of the role his philosophical work and his personal engagement played in the constitution and rise of analytic philosophy in the Czech Republic . We are grateful to John Searle for his kind approval to publish a transcription of one of his Prague lectures and in particular for substan- tial, detailed and creative reactions to each of the 15 papers collected in this volume . In these responses, the reader receives the most valuable source for better appreciation of John Searle’s views on many signifi- cant philosophical topics, their background and their consequences . Our thanks belong also to the Philosophical Institute of the Czech Acad- emy of Sciences for generous support of this project and to the editors of Organon F for cooperating on its implementation . * * * The volume is opened by a transcription of the lecture on The Inten- tionality of Visual Perception, given by John Searle at the Institute of Phi- losophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague on May 23, 2011 . We are grateful to Irma Hvorecká for having reconstructed the talk from (technically not quite perfect) video recording and to John Searle for having revised the resulting text for the publication in this volume . The papers of other contributors are divided into four sections, rath- er roughly and with numerous thematic overlaps. The first one, focus- ing on the problems of ontology, begins with two attempts to specify and critically evaluate John Searle’s position in the realism-antirealism dispute: Lukáš Zámečník analyzes the relations of Searle’s external re- alism to the system of commonly shared beliefs and communicative commitments, while Tomáš Marvan argues that Searle’s position is in fact compatible with ontological constructivism and defends the idea of “privileged conceptual scheme”, rejected by Searle . In the third paper 6______________________________________________________________ Introduction of this section, Vladimír Havlík discusses Searle’s account of ontological emergence and raises several questions concerning its explicative po- tential . A special challenge (in particular for those who feel committed to the naturalistic position) represents the emergence of consciousness and of behaviour based on free will – phenomena that are thoroughly discussed in the first two papers of the second section, devoted to the philosophy of mind . Martin Pokorný develops an account of conscious- ness which is (intended to be) in the Searlean line, while Juraj Hvorecký discusses Searle’s solution of the (apparent) conflict between the uni- versal determinism and the possibility of free will . In other contribu- tions to this section, Pavla Toráčová approaches Searle’s theory of social institutions as a source of the explanation of the nature of intentionality; Tomáš Hříbek addresses the dispute between Searle and Davidson con- cerning the attribution of thought to prelinguistic animals and suggest a position which should enable to appreciate relevant arguments raised on both sides; Petr Koťátko defends and applies the Searlean internal- ist way of construing the content of thoughts and communicative acts, which (as he attempts to show) reflects and incorporates some aspects of the externalist initiative . An important part of this discussion (and of the externalist/internal- ist debate in general) concerns the role of proper names – a topic of the first two papers of the philosophy of language section . Zsofia Zvolen- szky demonstrates how Searle’s theory of proper names, in its authentic form, not identifiable with the cluster-of-descriptions doctrine common- ly attributed to Searle, is (or can be made) safe against the main objec- tions raised by its critics . Marek Nagy suggests how to approach proper names from the perspective set up by Searle’s theory of social reality, in particular by exploiting his notion of status function . Vít Gvoždiak proposes an interpretation of Searle’s achievements in the philosophy of language, as well as of his analysis of the constitution of social reality, from the point of view of semiotics . In the last contribution of this sec- tion, Tomáš Koblížek addresses some issues of the well-known discussion between John Searle and Jacques Derrida: he defends (against Searle’s objections) Derrida’s account of the purity of concepts (as independent on the results of their application) and questions Searle’s account of the relation between expression meaning and utterance meaning . The last group of papers deals with the applications of Searle’s philosophy of language (in particular of his speech act theory) in the Introduction ______________________________________________________________7 theory of fiction and in the analysis of metaphors . Jiří Koten discusses the applicability of Searle’s account of fictional discourse (as based on pretended assertions) in the theory of film, while Jan Tlustý exploits Searle’s theory of fiction in analyzing the distinction between fictional and factual autobiography . In the last paper, Jakub Mácha confronts Searle’s and Davidson’s account of metaphors and argues that Searle’s theory can meet most of Davidson’s objections . Although this collection has been intended as homage to John Searle and congratulation to his anniversary, the real gift was received by the contributors (and with them all the readers) in John Searle’s thorough and attentive replies . They appear in the last section of the volume . The Editors References Searle, J . (1969): Speech Acts. An Essay in the Philosophy of Language . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press . Searle, J . (1979): Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory f Speech Acts . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press . Searle, J . (1983): Intentionality. An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press . Searle, J . (1992): Is There a Problem About Realism? Filosofický časopis XL, vol . 3, 413-433 (Introduction by P. Koťátko). smiTH, B . (ed .) (2003): John Searle . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press . Perceptual Intentionality John R. Searle Perception looms large in our philosophical tradition . There are a number of reasons for this, but two stand out . First, for the three cen- turies after Descartes epistemology, especially skeptical epistemology, was at the center of Western philosophy; and of course there is really no way to face these issues without advancing a theory of perception . A second reason is that philosophy is generally concerned with the rela- tion of human beings and reality, and the primary conscious medium by which humans relate to the real world is the medium of perceptual experience . Unfortunately, the entire philosophical tradition rests on a disas- trous mistake . This mistake in turn rests on a failure to understand the intentionality of perception . So the article will have two aims: I want to expose and correct what I will call the Bad Argument, which afflicts just about all of the major philosophers after Descartes, in fact all known to me; and second I want to provide at least the beginnings of an account of the intentionality of perceptual experience . 1 The Bad Argument The account of perception that I will present is a form of direct realism, according to which, in a typical perceptual experience, we are directly aware of objects and states of affairs around us . “Directly” means that the relationship is unmediated . Looking at the desk in front of me is not like seeing the desk on television or reflected in a mirror. In those cases I do not see the desk directly; right now I see it directly . Traditionally direct realism is opposed to representative realism, according to which there is a real world out there; but we cannot perceive it directly . We only perceive representations of it in the form of our impressions, ideas, or sense data . Famous representative realists are Descartes and Locke . Because direct realism is so obviously consistent with both our ex- perience and with common sense, Why has it been so frequently de- nied? Here is the amazing fact . None of the Great Philosophers in the Organon F 19 (2012), 9-22 © 2012 The Author. Journal compilation © 2012 Institute of Philosophy SAS 10____________________________________________________________John R. Searle tradition that I am familiar with – and by Great Philosophers, I mean Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant, and I would have to add Mill and Hegel – were direct realists . They all, in one way or another, accepted an argument that goes back at least to the 17th cen- tury, and for all I know it may even go all the way back to the Greeks . The standard argument against direct realism is called the Argument from Illusion . And here is how it goes: I said that I see the desk in front of me, but suppose I were having a hallucination . I could be having an experience exactly like this, completely indiscriminable from this one with exactly the same content as this one, and be having a total halluci- nation . You could have the same experience without there being a desk on the other end of the experience . But now comes a crucial step . The character of the experience in the hallucination case and the character in the veridical case, the bad case and the good case respectively, is the same; so any analysis of one has to be applied to the other . But in the bad case, though one is not aware of a desk, one is certainly aware of something . One is conscious of something, and, at least, in some sense, one “sees” something . That something cannot be a material object, be- cause there is no material object there in the case of the hallucination . Yet I am aware of something . Let us give a name for such somethings; they were called “ideas” by Berkeley, Descartes, and Locke, “impres- sions” by Hume, and came to be called “sense data” in the 20th century . So I will stick with “sense data” and say we are aware of a sense datum . A sense datum is an entirely mind dependent, ontologically subjective entity . Now, by the principle that both the good case and the bad case should receive the same analysis, it follows that in the good case I am not aware of a material object but only of sense data . But now it seems to follow that in all experiences I am aware only of sense data, not of mind independent material objects . And the question then arises, What is the relationships between the sense data that I do see and the mate- rial object that apparently I do not see? This argument in various forms survives right to the present day . What is wrong with the argument? On the surface, at least, it rests on a simple fallacy of ambiguity . The ex- pression “aware of”, “conscious of”, and even “sees” in this argument, are ambiguous . The ambiguity can be illustrated by using a very simple and unproblematic example . If I push my hand very hard against the top of the desk, I am aware of the surface of the desk . This is the inten- tionality sense of “aware of” that has the desk as the intentional object . But it is obvious that I am also aware of a painful sensation in my hand