Review of Making the Social World by John Searle (2010) (review revised 2019) Michael Starks ABSTRACT Before commenting in detail on making the Social World (MSW) I will first offer some comments on philosophy (descriptive psychology) and its relationship to contemporary psychological research as exemplified in the works of Searle (S) and Wittgenstein (W), since I feel that this is the best way to place Searle or any commentator on behavior, in proper perspective. It will help greatly to see my reviews of PNC, TLP, PI, OC, TARW and other books by these two geniuses of descriptive psychology. S makes no reference to W's prescient statement of mind as mechanism in TLP, and his destruction of it in his later work. Since W, S has become the principal deconstructor of these mechanical views of behavior, and the most important descriptive psychologist (philosopher), but does not realize how completely W anticipated him nor, by and large, do others (but see the many papers and books of Proudfoot and Copeland on W, Turing and AI). S's work is vastly easier to follow than W's, and though there is some jargon, it is mostly spectacularly clear if you approach it from the right direction. See my reviews of W S and other books for more details. Overall, MSW is a good summary of the many substantial advances over Wittgenstein resulting from S's half century of work, but in my view, W still is unequaled for basic psychology once you grasp what he is saying (see my reviews). Ideally, they should be read together: Searle for the clear coherent prose and generalizations on the operation of S2/S3, illustrated with W's perspicacious examples of the operation of S1/S2, and his brilliant aphorisms. If I were much younger I would write a book doing exactly that. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book 'The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see 'Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) and Suicidal Utopian 2 Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) "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 "Now if it is not the causal connections which we are concerned with, then the activities of the mind lie open before us." Wittgenstein "The Blue Book" p6 (1933) "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." Wittgenstein 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." Wittgenstein PI 126 "What we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of man, not curiosities; however, but rather observations on facts which no one has doubted and which have only gone unremarked because they are always before our eyes." Wittgenstein RFM I p142 "The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops anyway."Wittgenstein Philosophical Occasions p187 "The greatest danger here is wanting to observe oneself." LWPP1, 459 "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 (this has to do with the Kantian solution to the problem of philosophy)." Wittgenstein CV p10 (1931) "But you cannot explain a physical system such as a typewriter or a brain by identifying a pattern which it shares with its computational simulation, because the existence of the pattern does not explain how the system actually works as a physical system. ...In sum, the fact that the attribution of syntax identifies no further causal powers is fatal to the claim that programs provide causal explanations of cognition... There is just a physical mechanism, the brain, with its various real physical and physical/mental causal levels of description." Searle Philosophy in a 3 New Century (PNC) p101-103 "Can there be reasons for action which are binding on a rational agent just in virtue of the nature of the fact reported in the reason statement, and independently of the agent's desires, values, attitudes and evaluations? ...The real paradox of the traditional discussion is that it tries to pose Hume's guillotine, the rigid fact-value distinction, in a vocabulary, the use of which already presupposes the falsity of the distinction." Searle PNC p165-171 "...all status functions and hence all of institutional reality, with the exception of language, are created by speech acts that have the logical form of Declarations...the forms of the status function in question are almost invariably matters of deontic powers...to recognize something as a right, duty, obligation, requirement and so on is to recognize a reason for action...these deontic structures make possible desireindependent reasons for action...The general point is very clear: the creation of the general field of desire-based reasons for action presupposed the acceptance of a system of desire-independent reasons for action." Searle PNC p34-49 "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 "Consciousness is causally reducible to brain processes...and consciousness has no causal powers of its own in addition to the causal powers of the underlying neurobiology...But causal reducibility does not lead to ontological reducibility...consciousness only exists as experienced...and therefore it cannot be reduced to something that has a third person ontology, something that exists independently of experiences." Searle PNC 155-6 "...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 proposition is defined as anything sufficient to determine conditions of satisfactions, it turns out that all intentionality is a matter of propositions." Searle PNC p193 "So, status functions are the glue that hold society together. They are created by 4 collective intentionality and they function by carrying deontic powers...With the important exception of language itself, all of institutional reality and therefor in a sense all of human civilization is created by speech acts that have the logical form of Declarations...all of human institutional reality is created and maintained in existence by (representations that have the same logical form as) Status Function Declarations, including the cases that are not speech acts in the explicit form of Declarations." Searle MSW p11-13 "Beliefs, like statements, have the downward or mind (or word)-to-world direction of fit. And desires and intentions, like orders and promises, have the upward or world-to-mind (or word) direction of fit. Beliefs or perceptions, like statements, are supposed to represent how things are in the world, and in that sense, they are supposed to fit the world; they have the mind-to-world direction of fit. The conative-volitional states such as desires, prior intentions and intentions-in-action, like orders and promises, have the world-to-mind direction of fit. They are not supposed to represent how things are but how we would like them to be or how we intend to make them be...In addition to these two faculties, there is a third, imagination, in which the propositional content is not supposed to fit reality in the way that the propositional contents of cognition and volition are supposed to fit...the world-relating commitment is abandoned and we have a propositional content without any commitment that it represent with either direction of fit." Searle MSW p15 "Just as in intentional states we can make a distinction between the type of state ...and the content of the state...so in the theory of language we can make a distinction between the type of speech act it is...and the propositional content...we have the same propositional content with different psychological mode in the case of the intentional states, and different illocutionary force or type in the case of the speech acts. Furthermore, just as my beliefs can be true or false and thus have the mind-to-world direction of fit, so my statements can be true or false and thus have the word-to-world direction of fit. And just as my desires or intentions cannot be true or false but can be in various ways satisfied or unsatisfied, so my orders and promises cannot be true or false but can be in various ways satisfied or unsatisfied- we can think of all the intentional states that have a whole propositional content and a direction of fit as representations of their conditions of satisfaction. A belief represents its truth conditions, a desire represents its fulfillment conditions, an intention represents its carrying out conditions...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 5 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 "The first four types of speech acts have exact analogues in intentional states: corresponding to Assertives are beliefs, corresponding to Directives are desires, corresponding to Commissives are intentions and corresponding to Expressives is the whole range of emotions and other intentional states where the Presup fit is taken for granted. But there is no prelinguistic analog for the Declarations. Prelinguistic intentional states cannot create facts in the world by representing those facts as already existing. This remarkable feat requires a language" MSW p69 "Speaker meaning... is the imposition of conditions of satisfaction on conditions of satisfaction. The capacity to do this is a crucial element of human cognitive capacities. It requires the ability to think on two levels at once, in a way that is essential for the use of language. At one level, the speaker intentionally produces a physical utterance, but at another level the utterance represents something. And the same duality infects the symbol itself. At one level, it is a physical object like any other. At another level, it has a meaning: it represents a type of a state of affairs" MSW p74 "...once you have language, it is inevitable that you will have deontology because there is no way you can make explicit speech acts performed according to the conventions of a language without creating commitments. This is true not just for statements but for all speech acts" MSW p82 These quotes are not chosen at random but (along with the others in my reviews of books by these two geniuses) are a précis of behavior from our two greatest descriptive psychologists. Before commenting in detail on Making the Social World (MSW) I will first offer some comments on philosophy (descriptive psychology) and its relationship to contemporary psychological research as exemplified in the works of Searle (S) and Wittgenstein (W), since I feel that this is the best way to place Searle or any commentator on behavior, in proper perspective. It will help greatly to see my reviews of PNC, TLP, PI, OC,TARW and other books by these two geniuses of descriptive psychology,To say that Searle has carried on W's work is not to say that 6 it is a direct result of W study, but rather that because there is only ONE human psychology (for the same reason there is only ONE human cardiology), that anyone accurately describing behavior must be voicing some variant or extension of what W said (as they must if they are both giving correct descriptions of behavior). I find most of S foreshadowed in W, including versions of the famous Chinese room argument against Strong AI and related issues which are the subjects of Chaps 3-5. Incidentally, if the Chinese Room interests you then you should read Victor Rodych's xlnt, but virtually unknown, supplement on the CR--"Searle Freed of Every Flaw." S makes no reference to W's prescient statement of mind as mechanism in TLP, and his destruction of it in his later work. Since W, S has become the principal deconstructor of these mechanical views of behavior, and the most important descriptive psychologist (philosopher), but does not realize how completely W anticipated him nor, by and large, do others (but see the many papers and books of Proudfoot and Copeland on W, Turing and AI). S's work is vastly easier to follow than W's, and though there is some jargon, it is mostly spectacularly clear if you approach it from the right direction. See my reviews of W S and other books for more details. Wittgenstein is for me easily the most brilliant thinker on human behavior. His work as a whole shows that all behavior is an extension of innate true-only axioms and that our conscious ratiocination (System 2) (S2) emerges from unconscious machinations (System 1) (S1) and is extended logically into culture (System 3(S3). See "On Certainty"(OC) for his final extended treatment of this idea-and my review thereof for preparation. His corpus can be seen as the foundation for all description of animal behavior, revealing how the mind works and indeed must work. The "must" is entailed by the fact that all brains share a common ancestry and common genes and so there is only one basic way they work, that this necessarily has an axiomatic structure, that all higher animals share the same evolved psychology based on inclusive fitness, and that in humans this is extended into a personality (a cognitive or phenomenological illusion) based on throat muscle contractions (language) that evolved to manipulate others (with variations that can be regarded as trivial). Arguably, all of W's and S's work is a development of or variation on these ideas. Another major theme here, and of course in all discussion of human behavior, is the need to separate the genetically programmed automatisms, which underlie all behavior, from the effects of culture. Though few philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists etc., explicitly discuss this in a comprehensive way, it 7 can be seen as the major problem they are dealing with. I suggest it will prove of the greatest value to consider all study of higher order behavior as an effort to tease apart not only fast and slow thinking (e.g., perceptions and other automatisms vs. dispositionsS1 and S2--see below), but the logical extensions of S2 into culture (S3). What W laid out in his final period (and throughout his earlier work in a less clear way) are the foundations of evolutionary psychology (EP), or if you prefer, psychology, cognitive linguistics, intentionality, higher order thought or just animal behavior. Sadly, almost nobody seems to realize that his works are a unique textbook of descriptive psychology that is as relevant now as the day it was written. He is almost universally ignored by psychology and other behavioral sciences and humanities, and even those few who have more or less understood him, have not realized the extent of his anticipation of the latest work on EP and cognitive illusions (Theory of Mind, framing, the two selves of fast and slow thinking etc., -see below). Searle's work as a whole provides a stunning description of higher order social behavior that is possible because of the recent evolution of genes for dispositional psychology, 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. Long before Searle, W rejected the idea that the Bottom Up approaches of physiology, experimental psychology and computation (e.g., Behaviorism, Functionalism, Strong AI, Dynamic Systems Theory, Computational Theory of Mind, etc.) could reveal what his Top Down deconstructions of Language Games (LG's) did. The principal difficulties he noted are to understand what is always in front of our eyes (we can now see this as obliviousness to System 1 (roughly what S calls 'the phenomenological illusion') and to capture vagueness ("The greatest difficulty in these investigations is to find a way of representing vagueness" LWPP1, 347). As with his other aphorisms, I suggest one should take seriously W's comment that even if God could look into our mind he could not see what we are thinking--this should be the motto of the Embodied Mind and, as S makes clear, of Cognitive Psychology. But God could see what we are perceiving and remembering and our reflexive thinking, since these S1 functions are always causal mental states while S2 dispositions are only potentially CMS. This is not a theory but a fact about our grammar and our physiology. S muddies the waters here because he refers to dispositions as mental states as well, but as W did long ago, he shows that the language of causality just does not apply to the higher order emergent S2 descriptions-again not a theory but a description about how language (thinking) 8 works. This brings up another point that is prominent in W but denied by S, that all we can do is give descriptions and not a theory. S insists he is providing theories but of course "theory" and "description" are language games too and it seems to me S's theory is usually W's description-a rose by any other name.... W's point was that by sticking to perspicacious examples that we all know to be true accounts of our behavior, we avoid the quicksand of theories that try to account for ALL behavior (ALL language games), while S wants to generalize and inevitably goes astray (he gives several examples of his own mistakes in PNC). As S and others endlessly modify their theories to account for the multifarious language games they get closer and closer to describing behavior by way of numerous examples as did W. Some of W's favorite topics in his later second and his third periods are the different (but interdigitating) LG's of fast and slow thinking (System 1 and 2 or roughly Primary Language Games (PLG's) and Secondary Language Games (SLG's) of the Inner and the Outer--see e.g., Johnston- 'Wittgenstein: Rethinking the Inner' on how confusing the two is a major industry in philosophy and psychology), the impossibility of private language and the axiomatic structure of all behavior. Verbs like 'thinking', 'seeing' first described S1 functions but as S2 evolved they came to be applied to it as well, leading to the whole mythology of inner resulting from e.g., trying to refer to imagining as if it were seeing pictures inside the brain. The PLG's are the simple automated utterances by our involuntary, System 1, fast thinking, mirror neuron, true only, non-propositional, mental statesour perceptions and memories and reflexive acts ('will') including System 1 Truths and UOA1 -Understanding of Agency 1-and Emotions1such as joy, love, anger) which can be described causally, while the evolutionarily later SLG's are expressions or descriptions of voluntary, System 2, slow thinking, mentalizing neurons, testable true or false, propositional, Truth2 and UOA2 and Emotions2joyfulness, 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, just make no sense--see W for many examples and Searle for good disquisitions on this). It is not possible to describe the automatisms of System 1 in terms of reasons (e.g., `I see that as an apple because...') unless you want to give a reason in terms of EP, genetics, physiology, and as W has demonstrated repeatedly it is meaningless to give "explanations" with the proviso that they will make sense in the future-- `Nothing is hidden'--they make sense now or never. 9 A powerful heuristic is to separate behavior and experience into Intentionality 1 and Intentionality 2 (e.g., Thinking 1 and Thinking 2, Emotions 1 and Emotions 2 etc.) and even into Truths 1 (T only axioms) and Truths 2 (empirical extensions or "Theorems" which result from the logical extension of Truths 1). W 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. FMRI, PET, TCMS, iRNA, computational analogs, AI and all the rest are fascinating and powerful ways to extend our innate axiomatic psychology, to provide the physical basis for our behavior and facilitate our analysis of language games which nevertheless remain unexplainable--EP just is this way-and unchanged. The trueonly axioms, most thoroughly explored in 'On Certainty', are W's (and later Searle's) "bedrock" or "background" i.e., evolutionary psychology, which are traceable to the automated true-only reactions of bacteria and their descendants (e.g., humans), which evolved and operate by the mechanism of inclusive fitness (IF)--see Bourke's superb "Principles of Social Evolution". W insisted that we should regard our analysis of behavior as descriptions rather than explanations, but of course these too are complex language games and one person's description is another's explanation. Beginning with their innate true-only, nonempirical (automated and nonchangeable) responses to the world, animals extend their axiomatic understanding via deductions into further true only understandings ("theorems" as we might call them, but this is a complex language game even in the context of mathematics). Tyrannosaurs and mesons become as unchallengeable as the existence of our two hands or our breathing. This dramatically changes one's view of human nature. Theory of Mind (TOM) is not a theory at all but a group of true-only Understandings of Agency (UOA a term I devised 10 years ago) which newborn animals (including flies and worms if UOA is suitably defined) have and subsequently extend greatly (in higher eukaryotes). However, as I note here, W made it very clear that for much of intentionality there are System 1 and System 2 versions (language games)-the fast unconscious UOA1 and the Slow conscious UOA2 and of course these are heuristics for multifaceted phenomena. Although the raw material for S2 is S1, S2 also feeds back into S1- higher cortical feedback to the lowest levels of perception, memory, reflexive thinking that is a fundamental of psychology. Many of W's examples explore this two way street (e.g., see the 10 discussions of the duck/rabbit and 'seeing as' in Johnston). I think it is clear that the innate true-only axioms W is occupied with throughout his work, and almost exclusively in OC (his last work  On Certainty'), are equivalent to the fast thinking or System 1 that is at the center of current research (e.g., see Kahneman-- "Thinking Fast and Slow", but he has no idea W laid out the framework some 75 years ago), which is involuntary and unconscious and which corresponds to the mental states of perception (including UOA1) and memory and involuntary acts, as W notes over and over in endless examples. One might call these "intracerebral reflexes"(maybe 99% of all our cerebration if measured by energy use in the brain). Our slow or reflective, more or less "conscious" (beware another network of language games!) second-self brain activity corresponds to what W characterized as "dispositions" or "inclinations", which refer to abilities or possible actions, are not mental states (or not in the same sense), and do not have any definite time of occurrence and/or duration. But disposition words like "knowing", "understanding", "thinking", "believing", which W discussed extensively, have at least two basic uses. One is a peculiar philosophical use (but graduating into everyday uses) exemplified by Moore (whose papers inspired W to write OC), 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'), and the S2 one, which is their normal use as dispositions, which can be acted out, and which can become true or false (`I know my way home'). 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", "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). Though W warned frequently against theorizing and produced more and better examples of language in action than anyone, one might say that his aggregate aphorisms illustrated by examples constitute the most comprehensive "theory" of behavior ("reality") ever penned. 11 Finally, let me suggest that with this perspective, W is not obscure, difficult or irrelevant but scintillating, profound and crystal clear, that he writes aphoristically and telegraphically because we think and behave that way, and that to miss him is to miss one of the greatest intellectual adventures possible. Now that we have a reasonable start on the Logical Structure of Rationality (the Descriptive Psychology of Higher Order Thought) laid out we can look at the table of Intentionality that results from this work, which I have constructed over the last few years. It is based on a much simpler one from Searle, which in turn owes much to Wittgenstein. I have also incorporated in modified form tables being used by current researchers in the psychology of thinking processes which are evidenced in the last 9 rows. It should prove interesting to compare it with those in Peter Hacker's 3 recent volumes on Human Nature. I offer this table as an heuristic for describing behavior that I find more complete and useful than any other framework I have seen and not as a final or complete analysis, which would have to be three dimensional with hundreds (at least) of arrows going in many directions with many (perhaps all) pathways between S1 and S2 being bidirectional. Also, the very distinction between S1 and S2, cognition and willing, perception and memory, between feeling, knowing, believing and expecting etc. are arbitrary--that is, as W demonstrated, all words are contextually sensitive and most have several utterly different uses (meanings or COS). Many complex charts have been published by scientists but I find them of minimal utility when thinking about behavior (as opposed to thinking about brain function). Each level of description may be useful in certain contexts but I find that being coarser or finer limits usefulness. The Logical Structure of Rationality (LSR), or the Logical Structure of Mind (LSM), the Logical Structure of Behavior (LSB), the Logical Structure of Thought (LST), the Logical Structure of Consciousness (LSC), the Logical Structure of Personality (LSP), the Descriptive Psychology of Consciousness (DSC), the Descriptive Psychology of Higher Order Thought (DPHOT), Intentionality-the classical philosophical term. 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). I suggest we can describe behavior more clearly by changing Searle's "impose 12 conditions of satisfaction on conditions of satisfaction" to "relate mental states to the world by moving muscles"-i.e., talking, writing and doing, and his "mind to world direction of fit" and "world to mind direction of fit" by "cause originates in the mind" and "cause originates in the world" 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). I have adopted my terminology in this table. 13 I 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 Needs a Self Yes Yes/No No No Yes No No No 14 Needs Language Yes No No No No No No Yes/No FROM DECISION RESEARCH Disposition* Emotion Memory Perception Desire PI** IA*** Action/ Word 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. 15 ******** Here and Now or There and Then I have a detailed explanation of this table in my other writings. One should always keep in mind Wittgenstein's discovery that after we have described the possible uses (meanings, truthmakers, Conditions of Satisfaction) of language in a particular context, we have exhausted its interest, and attempts at explanation (i.e., philosophy) only get us further away from the truth. It is critical to note that this table is only a highly simplified context-free heuristic and each use of a word must be examined in its context. The best examination of context variation is in Peter Hacker's recent 3 volumes on Human Nature, which provide numerous tables and charts that should be compared with this one. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date account of Wittgenstein, Searle and their analysis of 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 (2016). Now for some comments on Searle's MSW. I will make some references to another of his recent works which I have reviewedPhilosophy in a New Century (PNC). The ideas here are already published and nothing will come as a surprise to those who have kept up with his work. Like W, he is regarded as the best standup philosopher of his time and his written work is solid as a rock and groundbreaking throughout. However, his failure to take the later W seriously enough leads to some mistakes and confusions. In various places in his work (e.g., p7 of PNC) he twice notes that our certainty about basic facts is due to the overwhelming weight of reason supporting our claims, but W showed definitively in 'On Certainty' that there is no possibility of doubting the true-only axiomatic structure of our System 1 perceptions, memories and thoughts, since it is itself the basis for judgment (reason) and cannot itself be judged. In the first sentence on p8 of PNC he tells us that certainty is revisable, but this kind of 'certainty', which we might call Certainty2, is the result of extending our axiomatic and non-revisable certainty (Certainty1 of S1) via experience and is utterly different as it is propositional (true or false). This is of course a classic example of the "battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by language" which W demonstrated over and over again. One wordtwo (or many) distinct uses. On p12 of PNC, 'consciousness' is described as the result of automated System 1 functioning that is 'subjective' in several quite different senses, and not, in the normal case, a matter of evidence but a true-only understanding in our own case 16 and a true-only perception in the case of others. I feel that W has a better grasp of the mind/language connection, as he regards them as synonymous in many contexts, and his work is a brilliant exposition of mind as exemplified in numerous perspicacious examples of language use. As quoted above, "Now if it is not the causal connections which we are concerned with, then the activities of the mind lie open before us." One can deny that any revision of our concepts (language games) of causation or free will are necessary or even possible. You can read just about any page of W for the reasons. It's one thing to say bizarre things about the world using examples from quantum mechanics, uncertainty etc., but it is another to say anything relevant to our normal use of words. The deontic structures or 'social glue' are the automatic fast actions of S1 producing the slow dispositions of S2 which are inexorably expanded during personal development into a wide array of automatic unconscious universal cultural deontic relationships with others (S3). Though this is my précis of behavior I expect it fairly describes S's work. Those who wish to become acquainted with S's well-known arguments against the mechanical view of mind, which seem to me definitive, may consult Chaps 3-5 of his PNC. I have read whole books of responses to them and I agree with S that they all miss the very simple logical (psychological) points he makes (and which, by and large, W made half acentury earlier). To put it in my terms, S1 is composed of unconscious, fast, physical, causal, automatic, non-propositional, true only mental states, while slow S2 can only coherently be described in terms of reasons for actions that are more or less conscious dispositions to behavior (potential actions) that are or can become propositional (T or F). Computers and the rest of nature have only derived intentionality that is dependent on our perspective while higher animals have primary intentionality that is independent of perspective. As S and W appreciate, the great irony is that these materialistic or mechanical reductions of psychology masquerade as cutting edge science, but in fact they are utterly antiscientific. Philosophy (descriptive psychology) and cognitive psychology (freed of superstition) are becoming hand in glove and it is Hofstadter, Dennett, Kurzweil etc., who are left out in the cold. It seems quite obvious to me (as it was to W) that the mechanical view of mind exists for the same reason as nearly all behavior-it is the default operation of our EP which seeks explanations in terms of what we can deliberately think through slowly, rather than in the automated S1, of which we mostly remain oblivious (TPI). I find W's description of our axiomatic inherited psychology and its extensions in his OC and other 3rd period works to be deeper than S's (or anyone's), and so we 17 are NOT 'confident' that dogs are conscious, but rather it is not open to (not possible to) doubt. Chapter 5 of S's PNC nicely demolishes Computational Theory of Mind, Language of Thought etc., noting that 'computation', 'information', 'syntax', 'algorithm', 'logic', 'program', etc., are observer relative (i.e., psychological) terms and have no physical or mathematical meaning in this psychological sense, but of course there are other senses they have been given recently as science has developed. Again, people are bewitched by the use of the same word into ignoring the vast difference in its use (meaning). And of course, this is all an extension of classic Wittgenstein. Every thinking person should read Chapter 6 of S's PNC "The Phenomenological Illusion" (TPI) as it shows his supreme logical abilities and his failure to appreciate the full power of the later W, and the great heuristic value of recent psychological research on the two selves. It is clear as crystal that TPI is due to obliviousness to the automatisms of S1 and to taking the slow conscious thinking of S2 as not only primary but as all there is. This is classic Blank Slate blindness. It is also clear that W showed this some 60 years earlier and also gave the reason for it in the primacy of the true-only unconscious automatic axiomatic network of our innate System 1 (though of course he did not use these terms). But the really important thing is that TPI is not just a failing of a few philosophers, but a universal blindness to our Evolutionary Psychology (EP) that is itself built into EP and which has immense (and fatal) implications for the world. We are all meat puppets stumbling through life on our genetically programmed mission to destroy the earth. Our almost total preoccupation with using the second self S2 personality to indulge the infantile gratifications of S1 is creating Hell On Earth. As with all organisms, it's only about reproduction and accumulating resources therefor. S1 writes the play and S2 acts it out. Dick and Jane just want to play house-this is mommy and this is daddy and this and this and this is baby. Perhaps one could say that TPI is that we are humans and not just another primatea fatal cognitive illusion. The genes program S1 which (mostly) pulls the strings (contracts the muscles) of the meat puppets via S2. End of story. Again, he needs to read my comments on W's OC so he changes the "good reason to believe" at the bottom of p171 and the top of p172 to "knows" (in the true-only sense). A critical notion introduced by S many years ago is Conditions of Satisfaction (COS) on our thoughts (propositions of S2) which W called inclinations or dispositions to 18 act--still called by the inappropriate term 'propositional attitudes' by many. COS are explained by S in many places such as on p169 of PNC: "Thus saying something and meaning it involves two conditions of satisfaction. First, the condition of satisfaction that the utterance will be produced, and second, that the utterance itself shall have conditions of satisfaction." As S states it in PNC, "A proposition is anything at all that can determine a condition of satisfaction...and a condition of satisfaction... is that such and such is the case." Or, one needs to add, that might be or might have been or might be imagined to be the case, as he makes clear in MSW. Regarding intentions, "In order to be satisfied, the intention itself must function causally in the production of the action." (MSWp34). One way of regarding this is that the unconscious automatic System 1 activates the higher cortical conscious personality of System 2, bringing about throat muscle contractions which inform others that it sees the world in certain ways, which commit it to potential actions. A huge advance over prelinguistic or protolinguistic interactions in which only gross muscle movements were able to convey very limited information about intentions. Most will benefit greatly from reading W's "On Certainty" or "RPP1 and 2" or DMS's two books on OC (see my reviews) as they make clear the difference between true-only sentences describing S1 and true or false propositions describing S2. This strikes me as a far superior approach to S's taking S1 perceptions as propositional (at least in some places in his work) since they can only become T or F (aspectual as S calls them here) after one begins thinking about them in S2. However, his point in PNC that propositions permit statements of actual or potential truth and falsity, of past and future and fantasy, and thus provide a huge advance over pre or protolinguistic society, is cogent. S often describes the critical need to note the various levels of description of one event so for IAA "We have different levels of description where one level is constituted by the behavior at the lower level...in addition to the constitutive by way of relation, we also have the causal by means of relation." (p37). "The crucial proof that we need a distinction between prior intentions and intentions-inaction is that the conditions of satisfaction in the two cases are strikingly different." (p35). The COS of PI need a whole action while those of IAA only a partial one. He makes clear (e.g., p34) that prior intentions (PI) are mental states (i.e., unconscious S1) while they result in intentions-in-action (IAA) which are conscious acts (i.e., S2) but both are causally self-referential (CSR). The critical argument that both are CSR is that (unlike beliefs and desires) it is essential that 19 they figure in bringing about their COS. These descriptions of cognition and volition are summarized in Table 2.1, which Searle has used for many years and is the basis for an extended one I have created. In my view, it helps enormously to relate this to modern psychological research by using my S1, S2, S3 terminology and W's true-only vs propositional (dispositional) description. Thus, CSR references S1 true-only perception, memory and intention, while S2 refers to dispositions such as belief and desire. So, recognizing the S1 is only upwardly causal and contentless (lacking representations or information) while S2 has content and is downwardly causal (e.g., see Hutto and Myin's 'Radical Enactivism') I would change the paragraphs from p39 beginning "In sum" and ending on pg 40 with "conditions of satisfaction" as follows. In sum, perception, memory and reflexive intentions and actions ('will') are caused by the automatic functioning of our S1 true-only axiomatic EP. Via prior intentions and intentionsin-action, 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 so decoupled from intention) and other S2 propositional dispositions of our slow thinking later evolved second self, are totally dependent upon (have their COS in) the CSR rapid automatic primitive true only reflexive S1. In language and perhaps in neurophysiology there are intermediate or blended cases such as intending (prior intentions) or remembering, where the causal connection with COS (i.e., with S1) is time shifted, as they represent the past or the future, unlike S1 which is always in the present. The two systems feed into each other and are often orchestrated by the learned deontic cultural relations of S3 seamlessly, so that our normal experience is that we consciously control everything that we do. This vast arena of cognitive illusions that dominate our life S has described as 'The Phenomenological Illusion.' He ends this amazing chapter by repeating for maybe the 10th time in his writings, what I regard as a very basic mistake that he shares with nearly everyone-the notion that the experience of 'free will' may be 'illusory'. It follows in a very straightforward and inexorable fashion, both from W's 3rd period work and from the observations of contemporary psychology, that 'will', 'self' and 'consciousness' are axiomatic true-only elements of System 1 just like seeing, hearing, etc., 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. S understands and uses basically this same argument in other contexts (e.g., skepticism, solipsism) many times, so it is quite surprising he 20 can't see this analogy. He makes this mistake frequently when he says such things as that we have "good evidence" that our dog is conscious etc. The true-only axioms of our psychology are not evidential. Here you have the best descriptive psychologist since W, so this is not a stupid mistake. His summary of deontics on p50 needs translation. Thus "You have to have a prelinguistic form of collective intentionality, on which the linguistic forms are built, and you have to have the collective intentionality of the conversation in order to make the commitment" is much clearer if supplemented with "The prelinguistic axiomatics of S1 underlie the linguistic dispositions of S2 (i.e., our EP) which evolve during our maturation into their cultural manifestations in S3." Since status function declarations play a central role in deontics it is critical to understand them and so he explains the notion of 'function' that is relevant here. "A function is a cause that serves a purpose...In this sense functions are intentionality-relative and therefore mind dependent...status functions... require... collective imposition and recognition of a status" (p59). Again, I suggest the translation of "The intentionality of language is created by the intrinsic, or mind-independent intentionality of human beings" (p66) as "The linguistic, conscious dispositionality of S2 is generated by the unconscious axiomatic reflexive functions of S1" (p68). That is, one must keep in mind that behavior is programmed by biology. However, I strongly object to his statements on p66-67 and elsewhere in his writings 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 life would not be possible (no this is not a joke). As W showed countless times and biology shows so clearly, life must be based on certainty-automated unconscious rapid reactions. Organisms that always have a doubt and pause to reflect will die. Contrary to his comments (p70) I cannot imagine a language lacking words for material objects any more than I can imagine a visual system that cannot see them, because it is the first and most basic task of vision to segment the world into objects 21 and so that of language to describe them. Likewise, I cannot see any problem with objects being salient in the conscious field nor with sentences being segmented into words. How could it be otherwise for beings with our evolutionary history? On p72 and elsewhere, it will help to remember that expressions are the primitive reflexive PLG's of S1 while representations are the dispositional SLG's of S2. Another translation from Philosophese into English is needed for the second paragraph on p79 beginning 'So far' and ending 'heard before'. "We convey meaning by speaking a public language composed of words in sentences with a syntax." To his questions 4 and 5 on p105 as to the special nature of language and writing, I would answer: 'They are special because the short wavelength of vibrations of vocal muscles enable much higher bandwidth information transfer than contractions of other muscles and this is on average several orders of magnitude higher for visual information.' On p106, a general answer to question 2 (How do we get away with it-i.e., why does it work) is EP and S1 and his statement that "My main strategy of exposition in this book is to try to make the familiar seem strange and striking" is of course classic Wittgenstein. His claim on the next page that there is no general answer to why people accept institutions is clear wrong. They accept them for the same reason they do everything-their EP is the result of inclusive fitness. It facilitated survival and reproduction in the EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation). Everything about us physically and mentally bottoms out in genetics. All the vague talk here (e.g., p114) about 'extra-linguistic conventions' and 'extra semantical semantics' is in fact referring to EP and especially to the unconscious automatisms of S1 which are the basis for all behavior. Yes, as W said many times, the most familiar is for that reason invisible. S's suggestion (p115) that language is essential to games is surely mistaken. Totally illiterate deaf-mutes could play cards, soccer and even chess but of course a minimal counting ability would be necessary. I agree (p121) that the ability to pretend and imagine (e.g., the counterfactual or as-if notions involved in time and space shifting) are, in full form, uniquely human abilities and critical to higher order thought. But even here there are many animal precursors (as there must be), such as the posturing of ritual combats and mating dances, the decoration of mating sites by bower birds, the broken wing pretense of mother birds, fake alarm calls of monkeys, 'cleaner' fish that take a bite out of their prey and simulation of hawk and dove 22 strategies (cheaters) in many animals. More translation is needed for his discussion of rationality (p126 et seq). Saying that thinking is propositional and deals with true or false 'factitive entities' means that it is a typical S2 disposition which can be tested, as opposed to the true-only automatic cognitive functions of S1. In 'Free Will, Rationality and Institutional Facts' he updates parts of his classic book 'Rationality in Action' and creates some new terminology for describing the formal apparatus of practical reasons which I do not find felicitous. "Factitive Entities' do not seem different from dispositions and 'motivator' (desire or obligation), 'effector' (body muscles),'constitutor' (speech muscles) and 'total reason' (all relevant dispositions) do not, at least here seem to add to clarity (p126-132). We should do something here that rarely happens in discussions of human behavior and remind ourselves of its biology. 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 by 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 various neuromodulators in targeted areas of the brain. This may seem infelicitous as well, but has the virtue that it is based on fact, and given the complexity of our higher order thought, I don't think a general description is going to get much simpler. The overall cognitive illusion (called by S 'The Phenomenological Illusion') 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 knows this view is not credible. Thus, I would translate his summary of practical reason on p127 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, most often for reciprocal altruism), 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)." Contrary to S's comment on p128 I think if suitably defined, DIRA are universal in higher animals and not at all unique to humans (think mother hen defending her brood from a fox) if we include the automated prelinguistic reflexes of S1 (i.e., DIRA1), but certainly the higher order DIRA of S2/3 or DIRA2 that require language are uniquely human. This seems to me an alternative and clearer description of his 23 "explanation" (as W suggested these are much better called 'description') on the bottom of p129 of the paradox of how we can voluntarily carry out DIRA2/3 (i.e., the S2 desires and their cultural S3 extensions). That is, "The resolution of the paradox is that the recognition of desire-independent reasons can ground the desire and thus cause the desire, even though it is not logically inevitable that they do and not empirically universal that they do" can be translated 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." Likewise, for his discussion of this issue on p130-31-it is EP, RA, IF, S1 which ground the dispositions and ensuing actions of S2/3. On p140 he asks why we can't get deontics from biology but of course we must get them from biology as there is no other option and the above description shows how this happens. Contrary to his statement, the strongest inclinations DO always prevail (by definition, otherwise it is not the strongest), but deontics works because the innate programming of RA and IF override immediate personal short term desires. His confusion of nature and nurture, of S1 and S2, extends to conclusions 2 and 3 on p143. Agents do indeed create the proximate reasons of DIRA2/3, but these are not just anything but, with few if any exceptions, very restricted extensions of DIRA1 (the ultimate cause). If he really means to ascribe deontics to our conscious decisions alone then he is prey to 'The Phenomenological Illusion'(TPI) which he so beautifully demolished in his classic paper of that name (see my review of PNC). As I have noted above, there is a huge body of recent research exposing cognitive illusions which comprise our personality. TPI is not merely a harmless philosophical error but a universal obliviousness to our biology which produces the illusion that we control our life and our society and the world and the consequences are almost certain collapse of civilization during the next 150 years. He notes correctly that human rationality makes no sense without the 'gap' (actually 3 gaps which he has discussed many times). That is, without free will (i.e., choice) in some nontrivial sense it would all be a pointless, and he has rightly noted that it is inconceivable that evolution could create and maintain an unnecessary genetically and energetically expensive charade. But, like nearly everyone else, he cannot see his way out and so once again he suggests (p133) that choice may be an illusion. On the contrary, following W, it is quite clear that choice is part of our axiomatic S1 true-only reflexive actions and cannot be questioned without contradiction as S1 is the basis for questioning. You cannot doubt you are reading this page as your awareness of it is the basis for doubting. Few notice (Budd in his superb book on W is one exception) that W posed an 24 interesting resolution to this by suggesting that some mental phenomena may originate in chaotic processes in the brain-that e.g., there is not anything corresponding to a memory trace. He also suggested several times that the causal chain has an end and this could mean both that it is just not possible (regardless of the state of science) to trace it any further and that the concept of 'cause' ceases to be applicable beyond a certain point. Subsequently, many have made similar suggestions based on physics and the sciences of complexity and chaos. On p155 one should note that the Background/Network is our EP and its cultural extensions of S1, S2, S3. Given the above I don't feel it necessary to comment on his discussion of Power and Politics but I will say a few words about human rights. I agree completely with his comment on p185 that the UN Declaration of Human Rights is an irresponsible document. The rapid and probably inexorable collapse of society is due to people having too many rights and too few responsibilities. The only tiny ray of hope for the world is that somehow people can be forced (few will ever do it voluntarily) to place the earth first and themselves second. Consuming resources and producing children must be regulated as privileges or the tragedy of the commons will soon end the game. Overall, MSW is a good summary of the many substantial advances over Wittgenstein resulting from S's half century of work, but in my view, W still is unequaled for basic psychology once you grasp what he is saying (see my reviews). Ideally, they should be read together: Searle for the clear coherent prose and generalizations on the operation of S2/S3, illustrated with W's perspicacious examples of the operation of S1/S2, and his brilliant aphorisms. If I were much younger I would write a book doing exactly that.