Ekaterina Zemlyanuchina, 5.30 – 11.00.

John Searle.

K. Romasheva, 1-5.30.

We are ?with our special guest ? authors of google program, that’s quite honored to have professor John Searle visiting google because we can say ?? he is one of the most respected philosophical minds of this generation and professor Searle is widely-known for his contributions of the philosophy of language, mind, consciousness and artificial intelligence. Today he’s here to speak with us about his book “Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on free will, language and political power”. Else I want to share with you one quick thing, prolusionof review of his book, I came across something that you usually don’t see or see very often written about a philosophy book that professor Searle’s book is,quote,“Both eminently readable and eminently empirical”, I think this combination ?irrelevancecertainly helps to define professor Searle’s distinguish ? you see Berkeley a professor of philosophy, and this is a quick remind: if you have any questions or comments, please walk up to the microphone we have setup in the middle of the room and all of your fans on Youtube can see what a smart you are. Please, welcome John Searle thegoogle.

Thanks a lot. It’s probably the first lecture that any of you have ever attended that is not in PowerPoint. I hope it’s not the last. I actually dread those sincewhether guy gets up and reads of the PowerPoint and all that kind of stuff I’m talking about. I don’t have anything to read, I’m always kind of surprise to find out what I’ve just said because I didn’t planon saying it quite but, anyway, it makes a lecture more surprising for me. I have to tell you a little about this book because a book reallywas a surprise,it is the first time that I’ve published a book that I didn’t know I have written. What happened with this, I went to Paris and gave a bunchof lectures, one in French, I mean because I so damn considered about their language, I wanted to show them how I speak it. And the other is in English and at the end of this some guy came up to me and said: “Look, don’t you mind if we publish couple of this in France?”,couple of these lectures, and I said: “Sure”, obviously signed something and forgot all about it. And then I ?couple of articles in journals or something like that, a whole bags of books arrived on my doorstep containing book in French, tiny, call «названиенафранцузском» by me. So, I thought, well, you know, look, I went to Paris having a good time, forgot all about it, nine months later a package arrives on a doorstep, and the sign says: “You are the father”. OK, so, anyway, if this is fatherhood, I’m gonna make the most of it. Now, two articles really totally unrelated, one is about political power and the other is about free will. And the book was immediately translated from French into Spanish, German, Italian and Chinese. By the way, that’s a great improvement from a point of authors. The Chinese now don’t steal your outright, they actually sign a copyright paper, not like the old days when they simply stole you copyright. But after I was attacked in all these languages I got a request from Columbia University Press: “Could we do an English translation?” Well, thanks a lot, I actually have English versions of these lectures. So I gave them a copy and they said: “Surprise, it’s a kind of a small book with just two articles, could you write a kind of introduction?” so I did, I wrote an introduction, where I explained what the hell I’m trying to do on philosophy and how this ? a project. Anyway, I’m gonna start with that and answers, we don’t have time to talk about all issues, and I’d like to leave plenty of time for questions cause for me it’s always the most fun part of any session like this. So, I wanna summarize the nature of the project and then I’ll discuss the specific problem - freedom of the will and part because I don’t really know what the right thingto say about it is, I’m still very much open-minded, I can give you what I think of a good solutions to a lot of philosophical problems. But the problem of free will is still a tough one, I don’t know how to crack it,but I ?stuff. OK, what’s the role of philosophical project? I think myself that in the course of my lifetime, there has been a sea change and in nature of philosophy. There has been a major shift in intellectual life of which google is an important part. And that is central intellectual fact about the present era,is that knowledge close, it just continues to grow. We know a lot more than our grandparents did, our children will know a lot more than we do. People like to say: “Knowledge grows exponentially”. But the problem they haven’t thought what exponent is, so we’d better beconscious. This is a hell of the knowledge out there and that means that traditional conception of philosophy that goes back to the seventeenth century.

Ekaterina Zemlyanuchina, 5.30 – 11.00.

A traditional conception of philosophy goes back to the 17^th century, that says a main task is to place knowledge on a secure footing , a main task is to overcome skepticism, and you get this in Lock and … famously, that the task of philosophy is essentially epistemic. Epistemology is a fancy word means having to do with knowledge, It is the theory of knowledge. And it’s based on answering skepticism and I think now it’s a sense in which we can take skepticism seriously in a way that in the 17^th century people could. Knowledge was much more seriously in question in the 17^th century. Remember, educated people in the 17^th century routinely believed in unicorns and that was not … eccentric view.

But nowadays we just know too much, it’s very hard to send … to the moon and bring them back and then wonder does the real world actually exist. You know, we can’t take it seriously in a way that our great-great grandparents did, now that is in the say there is no … for skepticism but I regard the traditional skeptical puzzles. You know, how do I know that I’m not now dreaming hallucinating and i/m not a brain and about how do I know that you are not all zombies without any contradict, you know

I regard those as nice philosophical puzzles, but there are no longer … the subject. They are like, they are a bit like they old puzzles about space and time . How is it possible to across the room if … then before that he got across half of that …. You are all familiar with this, what’s the name of the guy can do …, yeah, right. But in any case somebody got in a course. Nobody seriously doubts exist in the space and time because of those skeptical puzzles. And similarly I don’t think anybody should … existence of knowledge.

Ok, but now if we got out of the skeptical … it seems to me …we got out of the epistemic … we are now in the ontological fire. Ontological is another big word that means having to do with existence. Why? So, here is the puzzle. I said we know a lot, but mostly what we know is …in physics and chemistry and geology and the so-called hard sciences and we get a conceptual reality from most basic sciences, that says a … the world consists of mindless meaningless physical particles that organized into systems and some of those systems are evolved … into people and other organisms like us. But now that leaves us with an interesting set of philosophical questions. If a bottom the universe described by atomic physics and chemistry … favorite sciences, then , how do we fit in, that is how do we make our self-conceptual consistent with what we know about how the world is … .

We think about ourselves as conscious, mindful, intentional, rational, freewil having, speech act performing , political esthetic and ethical human beings. Now how does that fet in, how does this self conception fit in, what we know about how the world is anyway , that the world is/ I used the word particle, it’s probably not right, but nobody is listening, I mean maybe it’s … whatever the ultimately true physics tells us are the basic building blocks of the universe we have a serious intellectual problem: how do we make/ what we know about those building blocks consistent with a certain conceptions we have about ourselves, how is it/ that there can be consciousness, how can there be freewill, how can we be affix, how can there be esthetics, how can we be society and so on and politics and political obligations, how can all of those exist in this mindless meaningless universe.

Ok, … take as my target of questioning what I thing is the toughest of those questions and that’s freewill. And let’s/ and it’s a good idea in philosophy to step back and ask yourself why do we have a problem here, why do we/ why is there a problem about freewill anyhow. Any answer to that is that/ and this is typical in philosophy: we have two impulses both of which are very powerful and we do not see how to render them consistent and yet we don’t see how to give up on either one of them. The two impulses … to say that any event that occurs in the natural world must have a causal explanation or explanations. But just anything that happens is gotta have an explanation. If the Oakland … collapses and somebody was …in a collapse you won’t get very far by saying: oh, it’s one of those things … , it’s just a breaks.

You can’t get away with that, we have to accept it as a general principle that everything that occurs in the natural world has a causal explanation.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 665