An integrational response to Searlean realism, or how language does not relate to consciousness

Abstract

The relationship between language and a science of consciousness is rarely treated as crucial for the field's metatheory (i.e., its underlying philosophical assumptions about the role and nature of language). John Searle is among those thinkers who has given language due attention as part of his realist philosophy, and semantic questions turn out to be in the forefront of his plea for a scientific approach to the phenomenon of consciousness. This paper will consider Searle's philosophy of language in the light of an integrational theory of communication (Harris 1981, 1996, 1998). It is argued here that Searlean realism is grounded in a 'reocentric' conception of the world, which (wrongly) assumes an isomorphic relation between language and what language refers to. © 2013 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston.