Realism, biologism and ‘the background’

Abstract

John Searle claims that intentional states require a set of non-intentional background capacities in order to function. He insists that this ‘Background’ should be construed naturalistically, in terms of the causal properties of biological brains. This paper examines the relationship between Searle's conception of the Background and his commitment to biological naturalism. It is first observed that the arguments Searle ventures in support of the Background's existence do not entail a naturalistic interpretation. Searle's claim that external realism is part of the Background is then addressed. It is shown that this claim implies an implicit understanding of reality, which is presupposed by the intelligibility of any objective, scientific description. As a consequence, Searle's account of the Background's role is incompatible with his insistence that it can be comprehensively characterized in terms of biological capacities. I conclude by showing that, if the tension is resolved by rejecting biological naturalism, Searle's position takes a substantial step in the direction of Heideggerian phenomenology, a move Searle has emphatically resisted in his various exchanges with Hubert Dreyfus.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to an audience at the Human Sciences Seminar, Manchester Metropolitan University and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. My argument has also benefited from several conversations with Soran Reader and Bill Pollard in the Woodman pub.

Notes

See, for example, Searle (1983, 1991, 1992, 1995, 2000, 2001). Although Searle's account of the Background has undergone various developments, the core theory has remained fairly consistent.

Searle (1992) regards the Network as a part of the Background, distinguished by its ability to generate conscious intentional states.

Searle retains the term ‘literal meaning’ and suggests that it is insufficient to determine conditions of satisfaction. However, one might take the alternative view that what Searle calls ‘literal meaning’ isn't literal meaning at all, given that literal meaning just is whatever fixes such conditions.

Searle's argument is also similar to certain formulations of the Frame Problem. See, for example, Dennett (1998, 181–205).

Searle's talk of ‘content’ is ambiguous. He sometimes talks of ‘content’ not being able to determine conditions of satisfaction without the Background (1992, 190) or of ‘content by itself’ (1983, 189) being insufficient. So it might seem that intentional states have their content regardless of the Background and that the Background contributes something in addition. However, Searle also states that ‘the existence of the intentional content in the first place requires the background abilities’ (1983, 195). I will assume in what follows that the Background does not act upon a pre-given content but partially determines content. After all, Searle claims that a complete dissociation between meaning and Background would result in an unconstrained ‘anything goes’ predicament. Effectively, there would be no meaning. It is implausible to maintain that intentional content would survive uncorrupted in such circumstances.

Some recent explanations of bizarre delusional states propose that loss of a background ‘feeling of familiarity’ is involved, which manifests itself as severely distorted world-experience. See Gerrans (1999) and Ratcliffe (2004).

As Stroud (1991, 246–47) comments, ‘it is very difficult to describe, and therefore to understand, what sort of thing this “Background” is supposed to be. I think Searle would be the first to insist that he has not really been able to explain it satisfactorily so far’.

Despite employing transcendental arguments, Searle is dismissive of much of the rhetoric surrounding them. For instance, responding to Stroud (1991), Searle remarks ‘I am trying to get an account of mental states, but I am not trying to answer such questions as “How do they come to be what they are?” or “What makes them intelligible?” I am not even sure I know what such questions mean, but in any case they are not my questions’ (1991, 290). His bemusement is, I think, partly symptomatic of his naturalistic view: if it doesn't fit into a scientific view of things, it doesn't make sense. However, whilst explicitly resisting such language, he also invokes it from time to time. After all, what is ‘giving sense’ (1992, 176), if not ‘conferring intelligibility’?

Searle does admit that the Background is an essentially ‘mental’ phenomenon but then takes the additional step of assuming that all such phenomena are neurophysiological.

For a summary and critical discussion of recent work on developmental systems, see Sterelny and Griffiths (1999, Chap. 5).

Searle does invoke the term ‘presupposition’ himself, in claiming that external realism, generated by the Background, is a ‘presupposition’ for much of language and thought (1995, 181–82). I see no problem with maintaining that certain presuppositions of concepts or intentional states are not themselves conceptual or intentional in nature.

Several of the essays in the two-volume collection edited by Wrathall and Malpas (2000a, 2000b) refer to these exchanges and elaborate on various points of agreement and disagreement between Searle, Dreyfus and Heidegger.

Much of the considerable difference between Searle's style of philosophizing and that of Heidegger may have its source in their respective attitudes to logic. Searle assumes that logical analysis is a suitable method for philosophically investigating Background reality. Heidegger, in contrast, suggests that ‘traditional logic’ is inextricable from the objective, conceptualized world. It thus ‘fails us’ when employed to study aspects of our more basic sense of world as a pre-objective orientation (1962, 166–67). As an alternative, Heidegger engages in a hermeneutic enquiry, which seeks to illuminate the forms of understanding that are central to interpreting the world, whilst in the process of interpreting that world. Whether some kind of ‘pre-logical’ philosophical understanding is in fact possible is the source of considerable debate. See Ratcliffe (2002, 291–95) for a discussion of Heidegger's view of logic and Carnap's famous objections to it.

Wrathall (2000) indicates that Searle's hostility towards Heidegger may be a symptom of his reading Heidegger through Dreyfus. Dreyfus places a strong emphasis on practical coping, which may suggest that it's ‘practical coping all the way down’. Regardless of whether Searle's objections to Dreyfus's Heidegger are warranted or not, they certainly do not apply to Heidegger himself. (For Dreyfus's responses to both Searle and Wrathall, see Dreyfus 2000).

For example, none of my remarks suggests that Searle would or should agree with Heidegger on matters such as the various structures of ‘Being-with-others’, the role of moods like anxiety, the claim that ‘death is individualizing’ or the claim that the concept of a ‘subject’ is philosophically bankrupt. Fruitful comparisons are, I think, limited to issues such as the nature of ‘world’ and the place of science.