Searle to discuss “future of philosophy”

John Searle, professor of philosophy at University of California-Berkeley, will speak about “The Future of Philosophy” Tuesday, March 20. The talk, scheduled at 7:30 p.m. in the Memorial Union’s Tripp Commons, is part of The “Humanities Without Boundaries” Lecture Series sponsored by the Center for the Humanities.

Searle has written for a wide audience on questions concerning the humanities, higher education, and the so-called “culture wars,” for the New York Review of Books and other venues. Searle is the Mills Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Language at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1959.

Searle attended UW–Madison from 1949-52. He was president of the Wisconsin Student Association and during his junior year he won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. He received a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from Oxford and an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from UW–Madison in 1994.

He is highly regarded for his accomplishments in the philosophy of language and philosophy of the mind and also noted for his work in cognitive science and psychology. His books include “The Rediscovery of the Mind” (1992), “The Construction of Social Reality” (1995), “The Mystery of Consciousness” (1997) and “Mind, Language and Society, Philosophy in the Real World “(1998).