Goncharova, S. Yu. John Searle’s Scientific Naturalism

Abstract: The article is devoted to fundamental ontology founded by John Searle who was the follower of scientific naturalism. For John Searle, ‘philosophy starts with scientific facts’ which generally contradicts to the idea of the world being the way it is described by science. So the philosopher raises the main question of his philosophy, ‘how does a human, this conscious creature, fit in our physical reality?’ Searle defines the main features of consciousness such as, consciousness is an integrated phenomenon, focus, functioning under the influence of one’s mood, and so on. However, Searle views subjective firstperson experience as a fundamental difference between consciousness and body. The philosopher considers himself to be the follower of the idea of autonomous mentality but at the same time he avoids the ‘consciousness –body’ dualism. John Searle tries to achieve correspondence with scientific naturalism without simplifying or eliminating the mental element but by expanding our interpretation of the physical so that it starts to include the mental.

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