John R. Searle has made profoundly influential contributions to three

areas of philosophy: philosophy ofmind, philosophy of language, and

philosophy of society. This volume gathers together in accessible form

a selection of his essays in these areas. They range widely across social

ontology, where Searle presents concise and informative statements

of positions developed in more detail elsewhere; Artificial Intelligence

and cognitive science, where Searle assesses the current state of the

debate and develops his most recent thoughts; and philosophy of

language, where Searle connects ideas fromvarious strands of his work

in order to develop original answers to fundamental questions. There

are also explorations of the limitations of phenomenological inquiry,

the mind-body problem, and the nature and future of philosophy.

This rich collection from one of America’s leading contemporary

philosophers will be valuable for all who are interested in these central

philosophical questions.

john r. searle is Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University

of California, Berkeley. His most recent publications includeMind: A

Brief Introduction (2004), Consciousness and Language (2002), Ration-

ality in Action (2001, 2003), and Freedom and Neurobiology (2007).