Searle on Consciousness: or How not to Be a Physicalist

In The Rediscovery of the Mind, John Searle offers a novel theory of consciousness that attempts to overcome the traditional debates within the philosophy of mind between dualism and materialism. Searle maintains that one can be a thoroughgoing materialist without denying the existence of mental phenomena that are inherently subjective in nature. In this paper I argue that Searle's view does not so easily bypass the traditional philosophical debate between materialism and dualism, and, indeed, that Searle's attempt to have it both ways is inconsistent. More specifically, I examine Searle's discussion of the causal reducibility of consciousness and his claim that consciousness is just another property of certain biological systems and argue that in both cases Searle has failed to show that consciousness can be both irreducibly subjective and a normal physical feature of the brain.