In this major new work, John Searle launches a formidable attack on current
orthodoxies in the philosophy of mind. More than anything else, he argues, it is the neglect of
consciousness that results in so much barrenness and sterility in psychology, the philosophy of
mind, and cognitive science: there can be no study of mind that leaves out consciousness. What is
going on in the brain is neurophysiological processes and consciousness and nothing more -- no rule
following, no mental information processing or mental models, no language of thought, and no
universal grammar. Mental events are themselves features of the brain, "like liquidity is a feature
of water."

Beginning with a spirited discussion of what's wrong with the
philosophy of mind, Searle characterizes and refutes the philosophical tradition of materialism. But
he does not embrace dualism. All these "isms" are mistaken, he insists. Once you start counting
types of substance you are on the wrong track, whether you stop at one or two. In four chapters that
constitute the heart of his argument, Searle elaborates a theory of consciousness and its relation
to our overall scientific world view and to unconscious mental phenomena. He concludes with a
criticism of cognitive science and a proposal for an approach to studying the mind that emphasizes
the centrality of consciousness to any account of mental functioning.

In his
characteristically direct style, punctuated with persuasive examples, Searle identifies the very
terminology of the field as the main source of truth. He observes that it is a mistake to suppose
that the ontology of the mental is objective and to suppose that the methodology of a science of the
mind must concern itself only with objectively observable behavior; that it is also a mistake to
suppose that we know of the existence of mental phenomena in others only by observing their
behavior; that behavior or causal relations to behavior are not essential to the existence of mental
phenomena; and that it is inconsistent with what we know about the universe and our place in it to
suppose that everything is knowable by us.