John Searle’s Philosophy of Language: Force, Meaning and Mind

This is a volume of original essays on key aspects of John Searle’s philosophy of language. It examines Searle\'s work in relation to current issues of central significance, including internalism versus externalism about mental and linguistic content, truth-conditional versus non-truth-conditional conceptions of content, the relative priorities of thought and language in the explanation of intentionality, the status of the distinction between force and sense in the theory of meaning, the issue of meaning scepticism in relation to rule-following, and the proper characterization of ‘what is said’ in relation to the semantics/pragmatics distinction. Written by a distinguished team of contemporary philosophers, and prefaced by an illuminating essay by Searle, the volume aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle\'s work in philosophy of language, and to suggest innovative approaches to fundamental questions in that area.

• An in-depth examination of key aspects of Searle’s philosophy of language • Includes Searle’s own current reflections on the subject • Will appeal to graduate students and scholars in linguistics and cognitive science, especially those with interests in semantics and pragmatics

Introduction Savas L. Tsohatzidis; 1. What is language: some preliminary remarks John R. Searle; Part I. From Mind To Meaning: 2. Content, mode, and self-reference François Recanati; 3. Searle against the world: how can experiences find their objects? Kent Bach; 4. Seeing what is there Robin Jeshion; 5. Intentionalism, descriptivism, and proper names Wayne A. Davis; 6. On the alleged priority of thought over language Christopher Gauker; 7. Rule scepticism: Searle’s criticism of Kripke’s Wittgenstein Martin Kusch; Part II. From Meaning To Force: 8. How to say things with words Kepa Korta and John Perry; 9. Semantics without the distinction between sense and force Stephen J. Barker; 10. Dynamic discourse semantics for embedded speech acts Nicholas Asher; 11. Yes-no questions and the myth of content invariance Savas L. Tsohatzidis; 12. How do speech acts express psychological states? Mitchell Green.