Review of 'John R Searle-Thinking About the Real World' by Franken et al eds. (2010) Michael Starks ABSTRACT This book is the result of Searle's stay in the Munster University Philosophy Dept in 2009 and all the papers except his introductory one and his final response are from persons associated with Munster. However all the papers were written or revised later and so are one of the most up to date looks at his views available as of mid 2013. S has in my view made more fundamental contributions to higher order descriptive psychology (philosophy) than anyone since Wittgenstein and has been writing world class material for over 50 years. He is also (like W before him) regarded as the best standup philosopher alive and has taught and lectured worldwide. He is also one of the clearest and most careful writers in the field so one would think that every philosopher writing an article on his work would have an up to date and accurate understanding of his ideas. Unfortunately this book shows that this is far from true. All the 11 articles make major mistakes regarding his views and regarding what he (and I) would regard as an accurate description of behavior. Searle's obliviousness (which he shares with most philosophers) to the modern two systems framework and to the full implications of W's "radical" epistemology as stated most dramatically in his last work 'On Certainty', is most unfortunate (as I have noted in many reviews). It was Wittgenstein who did the first and best job of describing the two systems (though nobody else has noticed) and OC represents a major event in intellectual history. Not only is Searle unaware of the fact that his framework is a straightforward continuation of W, but everyone else is too, which accounts for the lack of any significant reference to W in this book. As usual one also notes no apparent acquaintance with Evolutionary Psychology, which can enlighten all discussions of behavior by providing the real ultimate evolutionary and biological explanations rather than the superficial proximate cultural ones. However, his comment on p212 is right on the money-the ultimate explanation (or as W insists the description) can only be a naturalized one which describes how mind, will, self, intention work and cannot meaningfully eliminate them as 'real' phenomena. Recall Searle's famous review of Dennett's 'Conscious Explained' entitled "Consciousness explained away". And this makes it all the more bizarre that Searle should repeatedly state that we don't know for sure if we have free will and that we have to 'postulate' a self (p218-219). As he notes "The neuro-biological processes and the mental phenomena are the same event, described at different levels" and "How can conscious intentions cause bodily movement?...How can the hammer move the nail in virtue of being solid? ...If you analyze what solidity is causally...if you analyze what intention-in-action is causally, you see analogously there is no philosophical problem left over." 2 Also I would state "The heart of my argument is that our linguistic practices, as commonly understood, presuppose a reality that exists independently of our representations." (p223) as "Our life shows a world that does not depend on our existence and cannot be intelligibly challenged." This book is valuable principally as a recent synopsis of the work of one the greatest philosophers of recent times. But there is also value in analyzing his responses to the many basic confusions manifested in the articles by others. Since this review I have written many articles extending the framework of the logical structure of rationality and commenting in depth on Searle and Wittgenstein which are all readily available on the net. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle 59p(2016). For all my articles on Wittgenstein and Searle see my e-book 'The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 662p (2016). "The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling it a "young science"; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory.) For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. (As in the other case, conceptual confusion and methods of proof). The existence of the experimental method makes us think we have the means of solving the problems that trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by." Wittgenstein (PI p.232) "Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into complete darkness."(BBB p18). "But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness: nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false." Wittgenstein OC 94 "The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops anyway." Wittgenstein Philosophical Occasions p187 3 "The limit of language is shown by its being impossible to describe a fact which corresponds to (is the translation of) a sentence without simply repeating the sentence ..." Wittgenstein CV p10 "Many words then in this sense then don't have a strict meaning. But this is not a defect. To think it is would be like saying that the light of my reading lamp is no real light at all because it has no sharp boundary." BBB p27 "Every sign is capable of interpretation but the meaning mustn't be capable of interpretation. It is the last interpretation" BBB p34 "There is a kind of general disease of thinking which always looks for (and finds) what would be called a mental state from which all our acts spring, as from a reservoir." BBB p143 "And the mistake which we here and in a thousand similar cases are inclined to make is labeled by the word "to make" as we have used it in the sentence "It is no act of insight which makes us use the rule as we do", because there is an idea that "something must make us" do what we do. And this again joins onto the confusion between cause and reason. We need have no reason to follow the rule as we do. The chain of reasons has an end." BBB p143 "If we keep in mind the possibility of a picture which, though correct, has no similarity with its object, the interpolation of a shadow between the sentence and reality loses all point. For now the sentence itself can serve as such a shadow. The sentence is just such a picture, which hasn't the slightest similarity with what it represents." BBB p37 "Thus we may say of some philosophizing mathematicians that they are obviously not aware of the many different usages of the word "proof"; and that they are not clear about the differences between the uses of the word "kind", when they talk of kinds of numbers, kinds of proof, as though the word "kind" here meant the same thing as in the context "kinds of apples." Or, we may say, they are not aware of the different meanings of the word "discovery" when in one case we talk of the discovery of the construction of the pentagon and in the other case of the discovery of the South Pole." BBB p29 "Some of the most important logical features of intentionality are beyond the reach of phenomenology because they have no immediate phenomenological reality... Because the creation of meaningfulness out of meaninglessness is not consciously experienced...it does not exist...This is... the phenomenological illusion." Searle PNC p115-117 "...the basic intentional relation between the mind and the world has to do with conditions of satisfaction. And a proposition is anything at all that can stand in an intentional relation to the world, and since those intentional relations always determine conditions of satisfaction, and a 4 proposition is defined as anything sufficient to determine conditions of satisfaction, it turns out that all intentionality is a matter of propositions." Searle PNC p193 "The intentional state represents its conditions of satisfaction...people erroneously suppose that every mental representation must be consciously thought...but the notion of a representation as I am using it is a functional and not an ontological notion. Anything that has conditions of satisfaction, that can succeed or fail in a way that is characteristic of intentionality, is by definition a representation of its conditions of satisfaction...we can analyze the structure of the intentionality of social phenomena by analyzing their conditions of satisfaction." Searle MSW p28-32 "Superstition is nothing but belief in the causal nexus." TLP 5.1361 "Now if it is not the causal connections which we are concerned with, then the activities of the mind lie open before us." BBB p6 "We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course, there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer." TLP 6.52 "Nonsense, Nonsense, because you are making assumptions instead of simply describing. If your head is haunted by explanations here, you are neglecting to remind yourself of the most important facts." Z 220 "Philosophy simply puts everything before us and neither explains nor deduces anything...One might give the name 'philosophy' to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions." PI 126 "The more narrowly we examine actual language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. (For the crystalline purity of logic was, of course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement.)"PI 107 "The wrong conception which I want to object to in this connexion is the following, that we can discover something wholly new. That is a mistake. The truth of the matter is that we have already got everything, and that we have got it actually present; we need not wait for anything. We make our moves in the realm of the grammar of our ordinary language, and this grammar is already there. Thus, we have already got everything and need not wait for the future." (said in 1930) Waismann "Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle (1979)p183 5 "Here we come up against a remarkable and characteristic phenomenon in philosophical investigation: the difficulty---I might say---is not that of finding the solution but rather that of recognizing as the solution something that looks as if it were only a preliminary to it. We have already said everything.---Not anything that follows from this, no this itself is the solution!....This is connected, I believe, with our wrongly expecting an explanation, whereas the solution of the difficulty is a description, if we give it the right place in our considerations. If we dwell upon it, and do not try to get beyond it." Zettel p312-314 "Our method is purely descriptive, the descriptions we give are not hints of explanations." BBB p125 These quotes are not chosen at random but (along with the others in my reviews) are an outline of behavior (human nature) from our two greatest descriptive psychologists. In considering these matters we must keep in mind that philosophy is the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (HOT), which is another of the obvious facts that are totally overlooked –i.e., I have never seen it clearly stated anywhere. In addition to failing to make it clear that what they are doing is descriptive psychology, philosophers rarely specify exactly what it is that they expect to contribute to this topic that other students of behavior (i.e., scientists) do not, so after noting W's above remark on science envy, I will quote again from Hacker who gives a good start on it. "Traditional epistemologists want to know whether knowledge is true belief and a further condition ..., or whether knowledge does not even imply belief ... We want to know when knowledge does and when it does not require justification. We need to be clear what is ascribed to a person when it is said that he knows something. Is it a distinctive mental state, an achievement, a performance, a disposition or an ability? Could knowing or believing that p be identical with a state of the brain? Why can one say 'he believes that p, but it is not the case that p', whereas one cannot say 'I believe that p, but it is not the case that p'? Why are there ways, methods and means of achieving, attaining or receiving knowledge, but not belief (as opposed to faith)? Why can one know, but not believe who, what, which, when, whether and how? Why can one believe, but not know, wholeheartedly, passionately, hesitantly, foolishly, thoughtlessly, fanatically, dogmatically or reasonably? Why can one know, but not believe, something perfectly well, thoroughly or in detail? And so on – through many hundreds of similar questions pertaining not only to knowledge and belief, but also to doubt, certainty, remembering, forgetting, observing, noticing, recognising, attending, being aware of, being conscious of, not to mention the numerous verbs of perception and their cognates. What needs to be clarified if these questions are to be answered is the web of our epistemic concepts, the ways in which the various concepts hang together, the various forms of their compatibilities and incompatibilities, their point and purpose, their presuppositions and different forms of context dependency. To this venerable exercise in connective analysis, scientific knowledge, 6 psychology, neuroscience and self-styled cognitive science can contribute nothing whatsoever." (Passing by the naturalistic turn: on Quine's cul-de-sacp15-2005) Before remarking on this book, I will first offer some comments on philosophy and its relationship to contemporary psychological research as exemplified in the works of Searle (S),Wittgenstein (W), Hacker (H) et al. It will help to see my reviews of PNC (Philosophy in a New Century), TLP, PI, OC, Making the Social World (MSW) and other books by and about these geniuses, who provide a clear description of higher order behavior, not found in psychology books, that I will refer to as the WS framework. To show this framework and how it relates to a contemporary view of intentionality I have produced the following table. The rows show various aspects or ways of studying and the columns show the involuntary processes and voluntary behaviors comprising the two systems (dual processes) of the Logical Structure of Consciousness (LSC), which can also be regarded as the Logical Structure of Rationality (LSR-Searle), of behavior (LSB), of personality (LSP), of Mind (LSM), of language (LSL), of reality (LSOR), of Intentionality (LSI) -the classical philosophical term, the Descriptive Psychology of Consciousness (DPC) , the Descriptive Psychology of Thought (DPT) –or better, the Language of the Descriptive Psychology of Thought (LDPT), terms introduced here and in my other very recent writings. The ideas for this table originated in the work by Wittgenstein, a much simpler table by Searle, and correlates with extensive tables and graphs in the three recent books on Human Nature by P.M.S Hacker. The last 9 rows come principally from decision research by Johnathan St. B.T. Evans and colleagues as revised by myself. System 1 is involuntary, reflexive or automated "Rules" R1 while Thinking (Cognition) has no gaps and is voluntary or deliberative "Rules" R2 and Willing (Volition) has 3 gaps (see Searle) 7 Disposition* Emotion Memory Perception Desire PI** IA*** Action/Word Cause Originates From**** World World World World Mind Mind Mind Mind Causes Changes In***** None Mind Mind Mind None World World World Causally Self Reflexive****** No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes True or False (Testable) Yes T only T only T only Yes Yes Yes Yes Public Conditions of Satisfaction Yes Yes/No Yes/No No Yes/No Yes No Yes Describe a Mental State No Yes Yes Yes No No Yes/No Yes Evolutionary Priority 5 4 2,3 1 5 3 2 2 Voluntary Content Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Voluntary Initiation Yes/No No Yes No Yes/No Yes Yes Yes Cognitive System ******* 2 1 2/1 1 2 / 1 2 1 2 Change Intensity No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Precise Duration No Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Time, Place(H+N,T+T) ******** TT HN HN HN TT TT HN HN Special Quality No Yes No Yes No No No No Localized in Body No No No Yes No No No Yes Bodily Expressions Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Self Contradictions No Yes No No Yes No No No 8 Needs a Self Yes Yes/No No No Yes No No No Needs Language Yes No No No No No No Yes/No FROM DECISION RESEARCH Subliminal Effects No Yes/No Yes Yes No No No Yes/No Associative/Rule Based RB A/RB A A A/RB RB RB RB Context Dependent/Abstract A CD/A CD CD CD/A A CD/A CD/A Serial/Parallel S S/P P P S/P S S S Heuristic/Analytic A H/A H H H/A A A A Needs Working Memory Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes General Intelligence Dependent Yes No No No Yes/No Yes Yes Yes Cognitive Loading Inhibits Yes Yes/No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Arousal Facilitates or Inhibits I F/I F F I I I I Public Conditions of Satisfaction of S2 are often referred to by Searle and others as COS, Representations, truthmakers or meanings (or COS2 by myself), while the automatic results of S1 are designated as presentations by others ( or COS1 by myself). * Aka Inclinations, Capabilities, Preferences, Representations, possible actions etc. ** Searle's Prior Intentions *** Searle's Intention In Action **** Searle's Direction of Fit ***** Searle's Direction of Causation ****** (Mental State instantiates--Causes or Fulfills Itself). Searle formerly called this causally selfreferential. ******* Tversky/Kahneman/Frederick/Evans/Stanovich defined cognitive systems. 9 ******** Here and Now or There and Then A major theme in all discussion of human behavior is the need to separate the genetically programmed automatisms from the effects of culture. All study of higher order behavior is an effort to tease apart not only fast S1 and slow S2 thinking --e.g., perceptions and other automatisms vs. dispositions, but the extensions of S2 into culture (S3). Searle's work as a whole provides a stunning description of higher order S2/S3 social behavior, while the later W shows how it is based on true-only unconscious axioms of S1 which evolved into conscious dispositional propositional thinking of S2. S1 is the simple automated functions of our involuntary, System 1, fast thinking, mirror neuron, true-only, non-propositional, prelinguistic mental statesour perceptions and memories and reflexive acts including System 1 Truths and UA1 --Understanding of Agency 1-and Emotions1such as joy, love, anger) which can be described causally, while the evolutionarily later linguistic functions are expressions or descriptions of voluntary, System 2, slow thinking, mentalizing neurons. That is, of testable true or false, propositional, Truth2 and UA2 and Emotions2 (joyfulness, loving, hating)-the dispositional (and often counterfactual) imagining, supposing, intending, thinking, knowing, believing, etc. which can only be described in terms of reasons (i.e., it's just a fact that attempts to describe System 2 in terms of neurochemistry, atomic physics, mathematics, make no sense--see W, S, Hacker etc.). Disposition words have at least two basic uses. One is a peculiar philosophical use (but graduating into everyday uses) which refers to the true-only sentences resulting from direct perceptions and memory, i.e., our innate axiomatic S1 psychology (`I know these are my hands')--i.e., they are Causally Self Referential (CSR)-called reflexive or intransitive in BBB), and the S2 use, which is their normal use as dispositions, which can be acted out, and which can become true or false (`I know my way home')--i.e., they have Conditions of Satisfaction (COS) and are not CSR(called transitive in BBB). The investigation of System 1 has revolutionized psychology, economics and other disciplines under names like "cognitive illusions", "priming", "framing", "heuristics" and "biases". Of course these too are language games so there will be more and less useful ways to use these words, and studies and discussions will vary from "pure" System 1 to combinations of 1 and 2 (the norm as W made clear), but not of S2 only, since it cannot occur without involving much of the intricate S1 network of "cognitive modules", "inference engines", "intracerebral reflexes", "automatisms", "cognitive axioms", "background" or "bedrock" --as W and later S call our Evolutionary Psychology (EP). The deontic structures or `social glue' are the automatic fast actions of S1 producing the slow 10 dispositions of S2 which are inexorably expanded during personal development into a wide array of automatic universal cultural deontic relationships (S3). I expect this fairly well describes the basic structure of behavior. So, recognizing that S1 is only upwardly causal (world to mind) and contentless (lacking representations or information) while S2 has content and is downwardly causal (mind to world) (e.g., see my review of Hutto and Myin's `Radical Enactivism'), I would change the paragraphs from S's MSW p39 beginning "In sum" and ending on pg 40 with "conditions of satisfaction" as follows. In sum, perception, memory and reflexive prior intentions and actions (`will') are caused by the automatic functioning of our S1 true-only axiomatic EP as modified by S2 ('free will'). We try to match how we desire things to be with how we think they are. We should see that belief, desire (and imagination--desires time shifted and decoupled from intention) and other S2 propositional dispositions of our slow thinking later evolved second self, are totally dependent upon (have their COS originating in) the CSR rapid automatic primitive trueonly reflexive S1. In language and neurophysiology there are intermediate or blended cases such as intending (prior intentions) or remembering, where the causal connection of the COS with S1 is time shifted, as they represent the past or the future, unlike S1 which is always in the present. S1 and S2 feed into each other and are often orchestrated seamlessly by the learned deontic cultural relations of S3, so that our normal experience is that we consciously control everything that we do. This vast arena of cognitive illusions that dominate our life Searle has described as `The Phenomenological Illusion' (TPI). It follows both from W's 3rd period work contemporary psychology, that `will', `self' and `consciousness' are axiomatic true-only elements of S1 composed of perceptions and reflexes., and there is no possibility (intelligibility) of demonstrating (of giving sense to) their falsehood. As W made so wonderfully clear numerous times, they are the basis for judgment and so cannot be judged. The true-only axioms of our psychology are not evidential. Like Carruthers and others, S sometimes states (e.g., p66-67 MSW) that S1 (i.e., memories, perceptions, reflex acts) has a propositional (i.e., true-false) structure. As I have noted above, and many times in other reviews, it seems crystal clear that W is correct, and it is basic to understanding behavior, that only S2 is propositional and S1 is axiomatic and true-only. They both have COS and Directions of Fit (DOF) because the genetic, axiomatic intentionality of S1 generates that of S2 but if S1 were propositional in the same sense it would mean that skepticism is intelligible, the chaos that was philosophy before W would return, and in fact if true, life would not be possible. As W showed countless times and biology demonstrates, life must be based on certainty--automated unconscious rapid reactions. Organisms that always have a doubt and pause to reflect will die-no evolution, no people, no philosophy. 11 I would translate S's summary of practical reason on p127 of MSW as follows: "We yield to our desires (need to alter brain chemistry), which typically include Desire -Independent Reasons for Action (DIRA--i.e., desires displaced in space and time), which produce dispositions to behavior that commonly result sooner or later in muscle movements that serve our inclusive fitness (increased survival for genes in ourselves and those closely related)." And I would restate his description on p129 of how we carry out DIRA2/3 as "The resolution of the paradox is that the unconscious DIRA1 serving long term inclusive fitness generate the conscious DIRA2 which often override the short term personal immediate desires." Agents do indeed consciously create the proximate reasons of DIRA2/3, but these are very restricted extensions of unconscious DIRA1 (the ultimate cause). Obama and the Pope wish to help the poor because it is right but the ultimate cause is a change in their brain chemistry that increased the inclusive fitness of their distant ancestors. Evolution by inclusive fitness has programmed the unconscious rapid reflexive causal actions of S1 which often give rise to the conscious slow thinking of S2 (often modified into the cultural extensions of S3), which produces reasons for action that often result in activation of body and/or speech muscles by S1 causing actions. The general mechanism is via both neurotransmission and by changes in neuromodulators in targeted areas of the brain. The overall cognitive illusion (called by S `The Phenomenological Illusion', by Pinker `The Blank Slate' and by Tooby and Cosmides `The Standard Social Science Model') is that S2/S3 has generated the action consciously for reasons of which we are fully aware and in control of, but anyone familiar with modern biology and psychology can see that this view is not credible. A sentence expresses a thought (has a meaning), when it has clear COS, i.e., public truth conditions. Hence the comment from W: " When I think in language, there aren't `meanings' going through my mind in addition to the verbal expressions: the language is itself the vehicle of thought." And, if I think with or without words, the thought is whatever I (honestly) say it is as there is no other possible criterion (COS). Thus W's lovely aphorisms (p132 Budd) "It is in language that wish and fulfillment meet" and "Like everything metaphysical, the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language." And one might note here that `grammar' in W can usually be translated as EP and that in spite of his frequent warnings against theorizing and generalizing, this is about as broad a characterization of higher order descriptive psychology (philosophy) as one can find. Though W is correct that there is no mental state that constitutes meaning, S notes that there is a general way to characterize the act of meaning-- "Speaker meaning... is the imposition of conditions of satisfaction on conditions of satisfaction" which means to speak or write a well formed sentence expressing COS in a context that can be true or false and this is an act and not a mental state. Hence the famous quote from W: "If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of (PI p217)" and his comments that 12 the whole problem of representation is contained in "that's Him" and "...what gives the image its interpretation is the path on which it lies," or as S says its COS. Hence W's summation (p140 Budd) that "What it always comes to in the end is that without any further meaning, he calls what happened the wish that that should happen"..." the question whether I know what I wish before my wish is fulfilled cannot arise at all. And the fact that some event stops my wishing does not mean that it fulfills it. Perhaps I should not have been satisfied if my wish had been satisfied"...Suppose it were asked `Do I know what I long for before I get it? If I have learned to talk, then I do know." W can also be regarded as a pioneer in evolutionary cognitive linguistics. He dissects hundreds of language games showing how the true-only perceptions, memories and reflexive actions of system one (S1) grade into the thinking, remembering, and understanding of system two (S2) dispositions, and many of his examples also address the nature/nurture issue explicitly. With this evolutionary perspective, his later works are a breathtaking revelation of human nature that is entirely current and has never been equaled. Many perspectives have heuristic value, but I find that this evolutionary two systems view is the best. To paraphrase Dobzhansky's famous comment: "Nothing in philosophy makes sense except in the light of evolutionary psychology." He recognized that 'Nothing is Hidden'-i.e., our whole psychology and all the answers to all philosophical questions are here in our language (our life) and that the difficulty is not to find the answers but to recognize them as always here in front of us-we just have to stop trying to look deeper and to abandon the myth of introspective access to our "inner life" (e.g., "The greatest danger here is wanting to observe oneself." LWPP1, 459). Incidentally, the equation of logic or grammar and our axiomatic psychology is essential to understanding W and human nature (as DMS, but afaik nobody else, points out). Our shared public experience becomes a true-only extension of our axiomatic EP and cannot be found mistaken without threatening our sanity. That is, the consequences of an S1 'mistake' are quite different from an S2 mistake. A corollary, nicely explained by DMS and elucidated in his own unique manner by Searle, is that the skeptical view of the world and other minds (and a mountain of other nonsense including the Blank Slate) cannot really get a foothold, as "reality" is the result of involuntary axioms and not testable true or false propositions. In spite of the fact that most of the above has been known to many for decades (and even 3⁄4 of a century in the case of some of W's teachings), I have never seen anything approaching an adequate discussion in behavioral science texts and commonly there is barely a mention. The investigation of involuntary fast thinking has revolutionized psychology, economics (e.g., Kahneman's Nobel prize) and other disciplines under names like "cognitive illusions", "priming", 13 "framing", "heuristics" and "biases". Of course these too are language games, so there will be more and less useful ways to use these words, and studies and discussions will vary from "pure" System 1 to combinations of 1 and 2 (the norm as W made clear), but presumably not ever of slow System 2 dispositional thinking only, since any System 2 thought or intentional action cannot occur without involving much of the intricate network of "cognitive modules", "inference engines", "intracerebral reflexes", "automatisms", "cognitive axioms", "background" or "bedrock" (as W and later Searle call our EP). Now for some comments on "John R Searle: Thinking About the Real World" (TARW). The first and most important comment is that since I wrote this review my ideas have continued to evolve so I strongly recommend reading my more recent articles first, especially The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle (2016). This book is the result of S's stay in the Munster University Philosophy Dept. in 2009 and all the papers except his introductory one and his final response are from persons associated with Munster. However all the papers were written or revised later and so are one of the most up to date looks at his views available as of mid 2013. S has in my view made more fundamental contributions to higher order descriptive psychology (philosophy) than anyone since W and has been writing world class material for over 50 years. He is also (like W before him) regarded as the best standup philosopher alive and has taught and lectured worldwide. He is also one of the clearest and most careful writers in the field so one would think that every philosopher writing an article on his work would have an up to date and accurate understanding of his ideas. Unfortunately this book shows that this is far from true. All the 11 articles make major mistakes regarding his views and regarding what he (and I) would regard as an accurate description of behavior. Recently there have been some exchanges between the two recorded in "Neuroscience and Philosophy" which appeared as a result of H's views expressed e.g. in Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience which I will review soon. Both authors score some points and miss critical ideas in the others work. I have noted S's failure to appreciate W before. Hacker is representing W's views or at least Wittgensteinian views most of the time so we get as close as we ever will to a confrontation between these two geniuses of descriptive psychology --W and S. Anyone interested in a concise demolition of Quine (another great mind who totally missed W and thus the whole enterprise of philosophy) should see Hacker's paper 'PASSING BY THE NATURALISTIC TURN: ON QUINE'S CUL-DE-SAC' (though of course Q's deconstruction has been done by many including S). 14 The discussion of the logical (psychological) difference between the S1 causes and the S2 reasons in Chapter 7 of Hacker's recent book Human Nature, esp. on p226-32 is critical for any student of behavior. It is a nearly universal delusion that "cause" is a precise logically exact term while "reason" is not but W exposed this many times. Of course the same issue arises with all scientific and mathematical concepts. And of course one must keep constantly in mind that 'action', 'condition', 'satisfaction', 'intention', and even 'and', 'or', 'prior', 'true' etc. are all complex language games able to trip us up as W so beautifully described in BBB in the early 30's. On p21 we again run into what I regard as the most glaring flaw in S's work and one that should have been obviated long ago had he only read the later W more carefully. He refers to free will as an "assumption" that we may have to give up! It is crystal clear from W that will, self, world, and all the phenomena of our lives are the basis for judging-the axiomatic bedrock of our behavior and there is no possibility of judging them. Can we "assume" we have two hands or live on the surface of the earth or that Madonna is a singer etc? Perhaps this huge mistake is connected with his blending of true only S1 and propositional S2 which I have noted. Amazing that he can get nearly everything else right and stumble on this! On p22 and elsewhere he uses the notion of unconscious intentionality, which he first discussed in his 1991 paper in Phil. Issues, noting that these are the sorts of things that could become conscious (e.g., dreams). W was I think the first to comment on this noting that if you can't speak of unconscious thoughts you can't speak of conscious ones either (BBB). Here and throughout his work it is unfortunate that he does not use the S1,S2 concepts as it makes it so much easier to keep things straight and he still finds it necessary to indulge in very unWittgensteinian jargon. E.g., "Once you have manipulable syntactical elements, you can detach intentionality from its immediate causes in the form of perceptions and memories, in a way that it is not possible to make detachments of unsyntactically structured representational elements." (p31) just says that with language came the dispositional intentionality of S2 where conscious thought and reason became possible. Regarding reasons and desires (p39) please see above and my reviews of his other works. S's continued reference to dispositions as mental states and his reference to mental states as representations (actually 'presentations" in here) with COS, is (in my view) counterproductive. On p25 e.g., it seems he wants to say that the apple we see is the COS of the CSR (i.e., cause is built in) perception of the apple and the reflexive unconscious scratching of an itch has the same status (i.e., a COS) as the deliberate planned movement of the arm. Thus the mental states of S1 are to be included with the actions of S2 as COS. Though I accept most of S's ontology and epistemology I don't see the advantage, but I have the greatest respect for him so I will work on it. I have noted his tendency (normal for others but a flaw in S) to mix S1 and S2 15 which he does on p29 where he seems to be referring to beliefs as mental states. It seems to me quite basic and clear since W's BBB in the 30's that S2 are not mental states in anything like the sense of S1. The paragraph beginning "Because" on p25 is discussing the true only unconscious percepts, memories and reflexive acts of S1-i.e., our axiomatic EP. As noted, one can read Hutto and Myin for a very different recent account of the nonrepresentational or enactive nature of S1. The table of intentionality on p26 updates one he has used for decades and which I have used as the basis for my extended table above. Nearly half a century ago S wrote "How to derive ought from is" which was a revolutionary advance in our understanding of behavior. He has continued to develop the naturalistic description of behavior and on p39 he shows how ethics originates in our innate social behavior and language. A basic concept is the Desire Independent Reasons for Action (DIRA) which is explained in his various books. For an outline see my reviews of his MSW and other works. He tends to use the proximate reasons of S2 and S3 (i.e., dispositional psychology and culture) to frame his analysis but as with all behavior I regard it as superficial unless it includes the ultimate causes in S1 and so I break his DIRA into DIRA1 and DIRA2. This enables the description in terms of the unconscious mechanisms of reciprocal altruism and inclusive fitness. Thus I would restate the last sentence on p39 "...people are asked to override their natural inclinations by making ethical considerations prevail" as "...people are compelled to override their immediate personal benefits to secure long term genetic benefits via reciprocal altruism and inclusive fitness." I won't comment on the 11 papers, mostly of poor quality, which critique S, since he does a great job in his replies. However I must draw attention to the only reference to W (p49) where the authors show they don't have a clue about what he did. Any discussion of behavior benefits greatly from S's concepts such as Prior Intention, Intention in Action, intentional gaps, DOF, COS, CSR etc. but these authors seem only vaguely aware of most of his writings. S's obliviousness (which he shares with most philosophers) to the modern two systems framework and to the full implications of W's "radical" epistemology as stated most dramatically in his last work 'On Certainty', is most unfortunate (as I have noted in many reviews). It was W who did the first and best job of describing the two systems (though nobody else has noticed) and OC represents a major event in intellectual history. Not only is S unaware of the fact that his framework is a straightforward continuation of W, but everyone else is too, which accounts for the lack of any significant reference to W in this book. As usual one also notes no apparent acquaintance with EP, which can enlighten all discussions of behavior by 16 providing the real ultimate evolutionary and biological explanations rather than the superficial proximate cultural ones. Thus S's discussion of the two ways to describe sensations ('experiences') on p202 is in my view vastly clearer if one realizes that seeing red or feeling pain is automatic true only S1, but as soon as we attend to it consciously (normally in msec) it becomes 'seeing as' and a propositional (true or false) S2 function that can be expressed publicly in language (and other bodily muscle contractions) as well. Thus the S1 'experience' that is identical with red or the pain vs the S2 'experience' of red or pain once we begin to reflect on it normally are blended together into one 'experience'. And for me by far the best place to get an understanding of these issues is still in W's writings beginning with the BBB and ending with OC. Nobody else has ever described the subtleties of the language games with such clarity. One must keep constantly in mind the vagueness and multiple meanings of 'mistake', 'true', 'experience', 'understand', 'know', 'see', 'same' etc., but only W was able to do it-even S stumbles frequently. And it is not a trivial issue-unless one can clearly restate all of p202 separating the true only nonjudgeable S1 from the propositional S2 then nothing about behavior can be said without confusion. And of course very often (normally) words are used without a clear meaning-one has to specify how 'true' or 'follows from' or 'see' is to be used in this context and W is the only one I know of who consistently gets this right. Again on p203-206, the discussion of intrinsically intentional unconscious causal dispositionality only makes sense to me because I look at it as just another way to describe S1 states which provide the raw material for conscious S2 dispositionality which, from a biological evolutionary point of view (and what other can there be?) has to be the case. Thus, his comment on p212 is right on the money-the ultimate explanation (or as W insists the description) can only be a naturalized one which describes how mind, will, self, intention work and cannot meaningfully eliminate them as 'real' phenomena. Recall S's famous review of Dennett's 'Conscious Explained' entitled "Consciousness explained away". And this makes it all the more bizarre that S should repeatedly state that we don't know for sure if we have free will and that we have to 'postulate' a self (p218-219). Also I once again think S is on the wrong track (p214) when he suggests that the confusions are due to historical mistakes in philosophy such as dualism, idealism, materialism, epiphenomenalism etc., rather than in universal susceptibility to the defaults of our EP-TPI as he has noted, and bewitchment by language as beautifully described by W. As he notes "The neurobiological processes and the mental phenomena are the same event, described at different levels" and "How can conscious intentions cause bodily movement?...How can the hammer move the nail in virtue of being solid? ...If you analyze what solidity is causally...if you 17 analyze what intention-in-action is causally, you see analogously there is no philosophical problem left over." I would translate his comment (p220) "A speaker can use an expression to refer only if in the utterance of the referring expressions the speaker introduces a condition that the object referred to satisfies; and reference is achieved in virtue of the satisfaction of that condition." As "Meaning is achieved by stating a publicly verifiable condition of satisfaction (truth condition)." "I think it is raining" is true if it is raining and false otherwise. Also I would state "The heart of my argument is that our linguistic practices, as commonly understood, presuppose a reality that exists independently of our representations." (p223) as "Our life shows a world that does not depend on our existence and cannot be intelligibly challenged." This book is valuable principally as a recent synopsis of the work of one the greatest philosophers of recent times. But there is also value in analyzing his responses to the many basic confusions manifested in the articles by others.