If you don't have the chance to take Searle's class but would like to, buy this book. In this book, Professor Searle has written exactly what he says in lecture. The upshot of reading the book without attending the lectures is that you don't have to sit and tolerate the questions posed to Searle by arrogant Cognitive Science undergraduate students. This is not to say that there are not good questions posed during lecture, but whatever questions are asked are answered here, for the most part. Whatever the case may be, Searle's writing style reflects the underlying approach that he seems to take towards philosophy in general: if you can't clearly write it or say it, you don't understand it. Searle seems to understand it very well.
Refreshing is the author's admission not to have full answers to some questions, like those of free will and the self. Yet he appears presumptuous thinking to have resolved various others, to have, especially, overturned insights of thinkers like Descartes and Hume, while he assumes a condescending attitude exemplified by the title, "Mind--A Brief Introduction". One's mind is evidently everyone's most immediate object of knowledge, requiring no introduction.
But the aim, in so-called "scientism" of contemporary philosophy in general, is to fit the mind or consciousness into science. Accordingly Descartes' dualism of mind and body is today perhaps the most disparaged philosophical concept, as indicated by Searle in his last paragraph (p.304): "We do not live in...two different...worlds, a mental world and a physical world...".
His faulty reasoning is illustrated (pp.302-3) when he says: "There is no such thing as the scientific world. There is...just the world...", contending that people mistakenly think there are other "world-views", namely worlds. However, it is not two worlds people think exist, it is one world, which includes the subjects of science, construed as physical, as well as such as the arts and, yes, mental life.
Another instance of false logic occurs when he contends a "genetic fallacy" (pp.270-1) by which "a causal account that explains...how [a] belief was acquired...shows the belief to be false". This is to demonstrate that "The causal account of how I...see my hand [through the eyes etc.]...does not show that I do not really see my hand...", the point being that because we perceive the world indirectly through our senses, it does not follow that the world DOES NOT exist. But the issue is: it does not follow that the world DOES exist, with all of it known only by its form in consciousness.
Instead Searle asserts flatly from the beginning that "the world...exists independently of our experiences" (p.3), and then attempts proving by linguistic fiat that the mental is not distinct from the physical. He says "our traditional vocabulary of `mental' and `physical'...assumes [their] mutual exclusion" (p.4), and that "mental states are...a certain type of biological state, and therefore...are physical" (p.115). However, others' distinction made is not dependent on words or no connection between the mental and physical. It is based on the difference by which the, "extended", physical world is subject to certain laws, now known by basic forces like electromagnetism, whereas the contents of our mental world behave otherwise. This distinction still exists, and there is no use trying to eradicate it.
I deal with these subjects and other fundamental issues much more extensively in my own book, but the presently reviewed one may regardless be found of interest, if only for the anecdotes or other material used in its arguments.
