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from the escaping-the-padded-kind-of-chinese-room dept. ((interview)) Among other items, like his suggested failure of computer models to explain how our brains produce phenomenal properties and the paradox of free-will, Searle remarks that: If you go back to the 17th century, and Descartes, skepticism -- the question of how it is possible to have knowledge -- was a live issue for philosophy. That put epistemology -- the theory of knowledge -- at the heart of philosophy. How can we know? Shouldn't we seek a foundation for knowledge that overcomes skeptical doubts about it? As recently as a hundred years ago, the central question was still about knowledge. But now, the center of philosophical debate is philosophy of mind. [Why the change?] We know too much. The sheer volume of knowledge has become overwhelming. We take basic findings from physics and chemistry about the universe for granted. Knowing much more about the real world than our ancestors did, we can't take skepticism seriously in the old way. It also means that philosophy has to proceed on the basis of all that we know. The universe consists of matter, and systems defined by causal relations. We know that. So we go on to ask: To what extent can we render our self-conception consistent with this knowledge? How can there be consciousness, free will, rationality, language, political organization, ethics, aesthetics, personal identity, moral responsibility? These are questions for the philosophy of mind. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/02/04/qa_john_searle/?page=full < | >
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John Searle: the shift from epistemology to philosophy of mind
