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John Searle’s Course Audio Available Online

December 8, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

OpenCulture.com has posted links to three complete, free courses from the great philosophy of mind and language professor John Searle from UC-Berkeley.

You may remember Searle from the Chinese Room argument as discussed in our philosophy of mind episode. These courses are on mind, language, and "philosophy of society," which I will surely be checking out, as I had no idea he was into that field.

These are just the newest of many online courses that OpenCulture tracks; check out the catalog.

-Mark Linsenmayer

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Filed Under: Web Detritus Tagged With: John Searle, philosophy blog, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy podcast

Comments

  1. Anthony Draper says

    December 14, 2010 at 10:39 am

    I’ve heard all 3 of these lectures (several times). Overall, the content is worthwhile. However, brace yourself for LOTS of digressions (often pointless) and frequent audio problems – which make for a somewhat frustrating listening experience, overall.

    By the end, you will surely agree that Searle didn’t need 32 lectures (at 80 mins. a piece!) to explain introductory philosophical content. At most, this content could have been relayed to the student within 8-10 hours.

    If you still want to invest that kind of time into the subject matter, then I strongly recommend reading one of his books instead (better time management on your part, you’d get more/deeper content, less digressions). Try “The Construction of Social Reality” or “Making the Social World” for starters.

    Good luck! 😉

    Reply
  2. Michael says

    July 14, 2012 at 5:47 pm

    I’ve only listened to the Philosophy of Mind lecture series so far (which BTW is also available through the iTunes store in the iTunesU section, for free).

    I agree about the audio quality, especially one can not hear the questions, and there are lots of questions. And Searle’s very good at answering and debating (in my opinion).

    I happen to like Searle’s lecturing style (he even brings his dog to prove his case;-)).

    The lecture follows his book Mind, a brief introduction, and covers about the same content. He’s a bit more direct and sarcastic in his comments in the lectures, which is fun.

    BTW and for all PEL-listeners with German as their first language: The Searle book is also available in German, “Geist, eine Einführung” (Suhrkamp), and the translation is very good.

    Reply
  3. Scott B. says

    November 4, 2012 at 2:35 pm

    I listened to these on Youtube (because I fucking despise Itunes)

    ( Philosophy of Mind lecture 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi7Va_4ekko
    Philosophy of Language lecture 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk5pIzCNOzU )

    I disagree with the above comments about sound quality; apart from a couple of lectures that are close to unlistenable because of such problems, I’d say at least 95% of them are fine (apart from not being able to hear the students’ questions).

    I do agree he digresses too much, but typically he’s digressing away from, and then back to, solid content, and there’s enough of that content for these lectures to be worth listening to anyway, and the digressions are often entertaining themselves.

    The main problem I had was trying to navigate these 28 lectures without any specific subject headings. Hopefully I can assist other people in that respect, because I compiled some rough topic descriptions as I was listening along:

    Philosophy of Mind course:

    lecture 1 Cartesian Dualism, Mind-Body Problem, Perception
    lecture 2 Descartes’s Problems & Solutions, Other Positions
    lecture 3 Behaviorism, Identity Theory, Functionalism
    lecture 4 Recap, The Computational Theory of the Mind
    lecture 5 Eliminativism, Anomalous Monism, Absent Qualia
    lecture 6 Rigid Designators, The Chinese Room Argument
    lecture 7 Strong AI, Cognitivism, Machines, Panpsychism
    lecture 8 Cognitive Science, Vision, Connectionism
    lecture 9 Consciousness, Thought Experiments, Objectivity
    lecture 10 Observer-relativity, Searle’s Mind-Body Solution
    lecture 11 Zombies, Supervenience, Mental Causation
    lecture 12 Extended Mind, Mysterians, Causal Reduction
    lecture 13 Searle’s Solutions to Descartes’s Problems
    lecture 14 Property Dualism, Structure of Intentionality
    lecture 15 Intentionality, cont., The Background
    lecture 16 Overview, Intentionality of Human Action
    lecture 17 Basic Actions, Naive Realism vs Representation
    lecture 18 Perception, Twin Earth Argument, Determinacy
    lecture 19 Intentionality of Vision, Perception, cont.
    lecture 20 Perception, cont., Internalism vs Externalism
    lecture 21 Externalism, Mental Causation, Extended Mind
    lecture 22 Hume on Causation, The Problem of Induction
    lecture 23 Sociobiology, The Connection Principle
    lecture 24 Unconscious Rules, Indeterminacy, VOR, LAD
    lecture 25 Aspectual Shape, Current CogSci, Free Will
    lecture 26 Compatibilism, Quantum Indeterminacy, Self
    lecture 27 The Background, Personal Identity, Self
    lecture 28 Animal Minds, Review of the Philosophy of Mind

    Philosophy of Language:

    lecture 1 Philosophy of Language – Distinctions and Overview
    lecture 2 Use & Mention, J.L. Austin’s Speech Act Theory
    lecture 3 Speech Acts – Twelve Features, Five Classifications
    lecture 4 Classifications, cont., Grice’s Theory of Meaning
    lecture 5 Grice, cont., Some Counterexamples, Intentionality
    lecture 6 Expressibility, Rules, Representation, Intentional Acts
    lecture 7 Theory of Human Action, Freedom of Will
    lecture 8 Performatives, Assertives, Directives, Commisives
    lecture 9 Review of Speech Act Taxonomy, Frege
    lecture 10 Russell’s Paradox, Frege’s ‘Sense and Reference’
    lecture 11 Frege, cont., Extensionality vs Intensionality, Russell
    lecture 12 Russell’s ‘On Denoting’, Strawson’s ‘On Referring’
    lecture 13 Review of Frege, Russell & Strawson, Twin-Earth
    lecture 14 Russell vs Strawson, Indirect Speech Acts, Indexicals
    lecture 15 Cluster theory & Kripke, Externalism vs Internalism
    lecture 16 Externalism vs Internalism, cont., Indexicality, Truth
    lecture 17 Theories of Truth, Objections to Correspondence
    lecture 18 Answers to Objections to Correspondence Theory
    lecture 19 Relativism, Solipsism, Background Capacities & Rules
    lecture 20 Anthropology, Fiction, Non-explicitness, Commitments
    lecture 21 Fiction cont., Grice’s Maxims, Indirect Speech Acts
    lecture 22 Indirect Speech Acts, cont., Metaphor
    lecture 23 Radical Contextualism, Metaphor, Quine’s Two Dogmas
    lecture 24 Naturalism, Quine on Indeterminacy, Chomsky
    lecture 25 Chomsky cont., Pictorial Representation
    lecture 26 Picturing, cont., Performatives, Human Institutions
    lecture 27 Social Construction, Externalism, Proper Names
    lecture 28 Philosophy of Language in Wider Context, Metaphor

    Reply

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