John Searle Audio & Video

John Searle visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power."

Conversations with History and Host Harry Kreisler welcome UC Berkeley Professor of Philosophy John R. Searle who talks about the work of a philosopher, critical thinking, and lessons of the Free Speech Movement.

The main purpose of this course is to answer the question, “How does language relate to the world?” In order to do this we will have to explore a lot of related questions...

The single most important question in philosophy and in intellectual life generally at the present time is this: How, if at all, can we reconcile a certain conception that we have of ourselves as conscious, free, rational, ethical, language using, social and political human beings in a world consisting entirely of mindless, meaningless physical particles?

The course deals with the foundations of the social sciences and the differences between social science explanations and natural science explanations.