Searle’s Approach to Body-Mind Problem

The aim of this article was to evaluate the originality of Searle’s approach to the body-mind problem. Searle bases his approach on the critique of two common positions in philosophy: Materialism and dualism. To Searle’s prospect, a reductionist version of materialism, which subjugates mental properties to physical ones, is as mistaken as the dualism that supports the existence of two substances in the universe, namely mind and matter. In this sense, avoiding the materialism-dualism dilemma but synthesizing the justifiable aspects of both ways of thinking, Searle’s approach proves a certain originality. Its reductionist or eliminative versions put aside, the materialist position seems right to him in acknowledging cerebral processes as cause of conscience and mental states. Dualism, on the other hand, can be justified in its emphasis on the irreducibility of what is mental, despite its unfounded presumption of two distinct substances. In addition to the type of “causality” where the processes in the brain provoke mental states, Searle reveals a second type of “causality” which makes mental states lean towards objects: The intentional causality. This is the framework in which we have summarized a non-reductionist and non-eliminative version of physicalism that Searle offers as a solution the body-mind problem