John Rogers Searle

“language is precisely designed to be a self-identifying category of institutional facts. The”

— John Rogers Searle

“If our imagined tribe just is not disposed to cross the boundaries as a matter of inclination, they do not in our…

— John Rogers Searle

“Moods are not to be confused with emotions. Moods will dispose you to having an emotion. Certain moods you're more likely to…

— John Rogers Searle

“I have thus defined the concept of the “Background” as the set of nonintentional or preintentional capacities that enable intentional states of…

— John Rogers Searle

“nothing in the literal meaning of those sentences blocks those wrong interpretations. In each case we understand the verb differently, even though…

— John Rogers Searle

“the point is that the only thing that blocks those interpretations is not the semantic content but simply the fact that you…

— John Rogers Searle

“One lesson to be derived from the study of institutional facts is this: everything we value in civilization requires the creation and…

— John Rogers Searle

“institutional facts in general require language because the language is partly constitutive of the facts. But”

— John Rogers Searle

“Intentional states function only given a set of Background capacities that do not themselves consist in intentional phenomena. Thus, for example, beliefs,…

— John Rogers Searle

“Any intentional state only functions, that is, it only determines conditions of satisfaction, against a set of Background abilities, dispositions, and capacities…

— John Rogers Searle

“there is a radical underdetermination of what is said by the literal meaning of the sentence. There is nothing in the literal…

— John Rogers Searle

“The best objects to think with are words, because that is part of what words are for. Indeed, it is a condition…

— John Rogers Searle

“The simplest argument for the thesis of the Background is that the literal meaning of any sentence can only determine its truth…

— John Rogers Searle

“Prediction and explanation are exactly symmetrical. Explanations are, in effect, predictions about what has happened; predictions are explanations about what's going to…

— John Rogers Searle

“these points can be made clearer by calling attention to the deontic status of institutional phenomena. Animals running in a pack can…

— John Rogers Searle

“I do not think there is a sharp dividing line between either the institutional and the non-institutional or the linguistic and the…

— John Rogers Searle

“when we talk about the Background we are talking about a certain category of neurophysiological causation. Because we do not know how…

— John Rogers Searle

“In a normal literal utterance of each of these sentences, each verb has a constant meaning. There is no lexical ambiguity or…

— John Rogers Searle