Ontology

The main thrust of Searle's philosophical writings is in ontology. This already sets him apart from many of his Anglo-American peers who favour epistemology and who, as a result, argue that issues concerning how we know must be settled before settling issues concerned with what we know. Searle is not particularly impressed with this line of thinking possibly because what we know is, for him, obvious in many cases. There is no need for endless rallies around the epistemological flag in order to say certain things about what is out there in the world. Indeed, Searle says “that I think our obsession with epistemology was a three hundred year mistake” (Baggini 1999). Our ordinary powers are good enough to tell us about most of what we know. To be sure, these powers can be fooled in certain situations. But when they lead us to believe that stars, mountains, rain, trees, grass, deer, cats, dogs, ants and, even, consciousness are real we should be reluctant to doubt these beliefs.

Instead of doubting the existence of all these things we should be engaging in processes of thinking that gain us understanding of their nature and structure. We do this in two ways. One we call philosophy, the other science. The two ways are not really separate. Philosophy represents ways of thinking and gaining understanding that are more informal than science. Philosophy often gets us underway in coming to understand a certain subject matter. Then it steps aside in favour of one of the sciences.