The Rediscovery of the Mind

By critiquing, criticizing and overcoming both these somewhat over-rated dominant and historical theories in the study of the unconscious mind, a portrait emerges of consciousness as the most important mental phenomenon to be examined. Searle feels that only now are he and his fellow theorists just beginning to rediscover the true character of the mind.

One of the hardest challenges facing philosophers is to shed light on differences between the intrinsic world which exists independent of any observer, as opposed to those characteristics which are observer relative - existing solely in relationship to the observer. An object may have mass which is intrinsic, but if a function is assigned to that object, that function has a relative quality. While the natural sciences are concerned with the intrinsic value of things, Searle flies in the face of such prevailing views - what he refers to as "an inner subjective qualitative state of consciousness" (p. xi), as well as mental states based on beliefs and desires, intentions and perceptions.

In fact, consciousness and intentionality are biological processes resulting from lower-level neural impulses in the brain. Both states of being are

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ersial age old mind-body problem is that the query presupposes that mental phenomena are caused by neurophysiological processes in the brain. This is a process which Searle refers to as "biological naturalism" (p. 1). That is, mental events may be reduced exclusively to neural, synaptic, receptor electrochemical processes. Such reductive reasoning is a mistake according to Searle. If materialists believe that if intentionality and consciousness really do exist, it would be impossible to reduce such entities to physical phenomena and therefore the mind problem would be difficult and valid (p. 2). Yet, this group believes that consciousness may be reduced to physical phenomenon. Just as Wittgenstein was convinced that most philosophical problems are merely the result of philosophers' misuse of language, Searle sees the problem between the property dualist and the materialist camps to be semantic in nature, with false opposition of "physical" versus "mental" delineations of reality (p. 25). The questions are only difficult because the definitions are so muddled. Physical reality in Cartesian terms as res extensa is obsolete and is refutable through our most recent understanding of the laws of physics (p. 25). The ontologica
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Approximate Word count = 1680
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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