John Searle tells us how philosophy fits into his project to defend the Enlightenment Vision.

He sets out a number of Default Positions that, according to him, most humans intuitively hold, like the mind-independent existence of the external world. These are the positions typically attacked by famous philosophers.

Searle believes the Default Positions are correct, so he will try to defend them, with one exception: Dualism.

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Start of a new book: Mind, Language and Society by John Searle.

Searle sets out his project, to defend the Enlightenment Vision against various 20th century anti-realist challenges like Freudian psychology, quantum mechanics, Russell's Paradox, Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems and Kuhn's view of Science.

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Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Mandeville believe that we act morally mainly out of self-interest. The only reason I don't break the law is because I don't want to get punished.

Hume rejects this view in favour of an moral philosophy based on a mixture of natural and artificial virtues. He argues that humans are natural cooperators. But to be able to live peacefully together in larger societies we also need socially created virtues such as justice.

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