John Searle and His Critics

For more than two decades John Searle has been developing and elaborating a unified theory of language and mind. Two items stand out as major landmarks: the publication of "Speech Acts" in 1969 and of "Intentionality" in 1983. Both of these seminal works offer structural theories, that is they analyze the items within their domains (speech acts and mental states) as having a structure which allows for variation along a number of parameters. This work proceeds from an analysis of the importance and influence of these two works to an overall assessment of Searle's impact in the philosophy of language, of mind, of social explanation and of reference and intentionality. Each of the chapters concludes with a summary and response from Searle himself.