John Searle asks whether consciousness can be reduced to the underlying brain processes. Can we give a complete account of mental phenomena purely in terms biochemical activity? If not, why not?

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John Searle argues that we have to start with the facts we know and then we will be able to see how the mind fits in with science and metaphysics: consciousness is the higher level effect of lower level brain processes.

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John Searle considers the incompatibility of dualism and materialism and argues that we should reject both, because they are based on faulty concepts.

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John Searle lays out the three basic features that any theory of consciousness must account for. Conscious phenomena are inner, qualitative and ontologically subjective.

Searle also rejects the idea that consciousness cannot be studied by science.

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After considering, and dismissing, various arguments against External Realism, John Searle asks if there is a positive case for it.

He also considers how religion might factor into these questions of metaphysics and comes to surprising and interesting conclusion.

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John Searle analysis a typical argument for skepticism of the external world. We also discuss naive realism and some aspects of empiricism.

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John Searle looks at four arguments against realism (the mind-independent existence of the external world), from perspectivism to underdetermination. He concludes that they are all weak or based on fallacies.

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John Searle sets out the default positions of reality and truth, namely external realism (there is a mind-independent world) and the correspondence theory of truth.

He muses about why so many influential philosophers have been drawn to challenge these basic assumptions. Maybe it's the will to power, or maybe it is to put the humanities on the same footing as the natural sciences.

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