K.

CORCORAN

THE TROUBLE WITH SEARLE’S BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM

ABSTRACT. John Searle’s The Rediscovery of the Mind is a sustained attempt to locate the
mind and the mental firmly in the realm of the physical. “Consciousness”, claims Searle,
“is just an ordinary biological feature of the world . . . ”1 More specifically, “[t]he mental
state of consciousness is just an ordinary biological, that is, physical feature of the brain”.2
Searle is adamant: “Consciousness, to repeat, is a natural biological phenomenon”.3
The purpose of this paper is to establish the claim that Searle’s version of biological
naturalism, articulated in Rediscovery and defended elsewhere,4 is an incoherent theory
of the mind. I attempt to make good on this claim by showing (i) that Searle’s biological
naturalism is committed to four claims which are individually plausible but not possible
for Searle to hold simultaneously, (ii) that Searle’s biological naturalism is, despite Searle’s
protests to the contrary, a form of dualism, and therefore (iii) that Searle’s biological nat-
uralism is enmeshed in the same philosophical tradition from which Searle claims to be
departing, and finally (iv) that Searle’s commitment to the joint notions of nonreductivism
and causal closure of the physical domain creates a problem his theory of the mind lacks
the resources to solve plausibly.

1. SEARLE ’ S BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM

The basic shape of Searle’s “scientific world-view” is familiar.

All the big and middle-sized entities in the world such as planets, galaxies, cars, and
overcoats, are made up of smaller entities that are in turn made up of yet smaller entities
until finally we reach the level of molecules, themselves composed of atoms, themselves
composed of subatomic particles.5

Let’s call collections of particles whose spatio-temporal boundaries are set

by causal relations systems. Cats, cabbages and combustion engines are all
examples of systems. Sticking with the metaphor of a multi-layered uni-
verse, each of these systems is made up of subsystems which are, in turn,
made up of still smaller systems. Organisms, for example, are made up of
subsystems called cells. Some such cellular organisms develop subsystems
of nerve cells. And, as Searle puts it, “some extremely complex nervous
systems are capable of causing and sustaining conscious states”.6
The interesting question raised by this tiered view of the objects and en-
tities constitutive of the universe concerns the relationship that is asserted
to hold between properties at different levels. Since entities or “systems”

Erkenntnis 55: 307–324, 2001.

© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
308 K. CORCORAN

of one level are decomposable into parts and systems that belong to the
nearest lower level, an obvious question is just what relation properties
of higher levels stand in to the properties and relations that characterize
the lower level parts and systems. One candidate answer to this question is
that the relation is the reducibility relation: higher level properties are redu-
cible to lower level ones. Searle himself explicitly rejects this answer. He
embraces a form of emergentism or what he calls “causal supervenience”.
The general idea embodied in the joint notions of emergence and su-
pervenience is this. There are some features of systems or entities taken as
wholes that are not, or not necessarily, features of its component parts. For
example, the trapezoid shape of the paper-weight on my desk is a feature
of the paper-weight but its constituent parts individually are not (or not
necessarily) trapezoid-shaped. Unlike the trapezoid shape of the paper-
weight, other properties or “system features” like the liquidity of water,
for example, cannot be figured out just by recourse to the arrangement or
configuration of the constituent microphysical parts alone. Here we must
appeal to the causal interactions holding among those component parts.
Such features Searle calls “causally emergent system features”.
Consciousness, says Searle,

is a causally emergent property of systems. It is an emergent feature of certain systems

of neurons in the same way that solidity and liquidity are emergent features of systems
of molecules. The existence of consciousness can be explained by the causal interactions
between elements of the brain at the micro level, but consciousness cannot itself be deduced
or calculated from the sheer physical structure of the neurons without some additional
account of the causal relations between them.7

Not only can the existence of consciousness be explained by “the causal

interactions between elements of the brain at the micro-level”, but “con-
sciousness is entirely caused by the behavior of lower-level biological
phenomena . . . ”.8
Let us refine the notion of supervenience a bit. Supervenience comes
in many forms, but the salient claim is that supervenience is a relation
between sets of properties. Let A and B be sets of properties. According to
supervenience, A supervenes on B just in case, necessarily, for each entity
x and each property F in A, if x has F then there exists a distinct property G
in B such that x has G, and necessarily if any y has G it has F. In the con-
text of the mind-body problem it is microphysical supervenience that we
are interested in. According to microphysical supervenience, when atoms
A1 through An compose a macrophysical object that instantiates intrinsic
qualitative properties F1 through Fg , then this entails that, necessarily, if
atoms just like A1 through An (with respect to their intrinsic qualitative
properties) stand in the same atom to atom relations as A1 through An , then
 THE TROUBLE WITH SEARLE’S BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM 309

those atoms compose a macrophysical object that instantiates F1 through

Fg .
When applied to the mind-body problem the properties in B are taken
to be microphysical properties of brains. The claim that the mental super-
venes on the physical comes to this: sameness of microphysical properties
(of brains) implies sameness of mental properties.9 More simply, the mi-
crophysical nature of a thing (a brain) wholly determines its mental nature.
Thus an entity cannot change in respect to mental properties without
changing in respect to its microphysical properties.
According to Searle, mentality is a higher level, supervenient property
of some biological organisms. More precisely, for Searle, the mental caus-
ally supervenes on and so is wholly explainable in terms of lower level
neurophysiological goings-on in the brain. Searle denies, however, that
higher-level features of the brain (i.e., mental properties) are reducible
to or identical with the lower-level properties on which they supervene.
For mental properties like pain “[have] a subjective mode of existence”
in contrast to the merely “objective” mode of existence enjoyed by neural
entities and processes. The existence of consciousness is “a first-person
existence”.10 Says Searle, “the ontology of the mental is an irreducibly
first-person ontology”.11
It is important to add that mental states, according to Searle, are
causally efficacious. Mental states not only cause other mental states
– thirst-states, for example, cause desires for water – but there is top-
down, mental-physical causation as well – e.g., desires cause physiological
events. Searle offers the following example of top-down causation.
If someone says to me “secrete acetylcholine at the axon end plates of your motorneurons
or I will blow your brains out!” I will swiftly do some downward causation, e.g., by trying
to raise my arm, which I know will cause the secretion of the acetylcholine. Here the higher
order mental state causes the lower order physiological event.12

We are now in a position to bring together some of the key claims

involved in Searle’s biological naturalism:

(1) Consciousness is a real, irreducible mental feature of the world.

(2) Consciousness is a biological, i.e., physical feature of the brain.

(3) Consciousness is entirely caused by and so is wholly ex-

plainable in terms of the behavior of lower-level biological
phenomena.

(4) Mental states are causally efficacious, i.e., mental states cause
other mental states as well as causing physiological events.
310 K. CORCORAN

It is the conjunction of these claims that seem to expose biological

naturalism to incoherence.

2. CONCEPTUAL DUALISM AND THE CHARGE OF INCOHERENCE

Searle takes the truth of what he has to say about the mind as being ab-
solutely obvious and uncontroversial to any adequately educated member
of contemporary western intelligentsia. I think he is mistaken about this.
I think it must be recognized that there are, at the very least, prima facie
difficulties with Searle’s biological naturalism.
Consider the four claims previously outlined. Although each of 1 to 4
may appear independently plausible, the conjunction of them highlights
the trouble with Searle’s biological naturalism. Take for example the first
two claims. The conjunction of these asserts that consciousness is both a
mental feature of the world and a physical feature of the world. But how
can that be? A commitment to substance monism (of the physicalist sort)
coupled with the assumption that

(2a) Every property is either a mental kind or physical kind

reveals the putative difficulty with (1) and (2). Consciousness, according
to (2a), is one or the other of the two kinds of property, but not both. But
the combination of (2a) and a commitment to substance monism (of the
physicalist sort), amounts to some form of property dualism. And Searle
rejects the property dualism implicit in (2a).
On the other hand,

(2b) Mental states are identical with brain states

is sufficient to render (1) and (2) compatible. But Searle rejects the identity
theorist’s (2b). As we have seen, Searle takes consciousness to be a higher
level, i.e., mental, i.e., irreducible feature of the brain.
Perhaps (1) and (2) can be made compatible by claiming that

(2c) Mental states are identical with physical states of the brain,

but then going on to point out that the physical states of the brain with
which mental states are identical are not any of the particular neural
goings-on in one’s brain. On such a view, consciousness and the mental
would turn out to be physical features of the whole brain, and not features
of any of its parts or their states. Perhaps this is what Searle wants. But
 THE TROUBLE WITH SEARLE’S BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM 311

as we shall see shortly, other claims Searle makes make (2c) unavailable
to him. The problem, then, with Searle’s commitment to (1)–(2) is that he
rejects claims like (2b), which are sufficient to render (1) and (2) compat-
ible, and a claim like (2c), which might also be sufficient to render (1)–(2)
compatible, appears closed off to him.13 Moreover, without a claim like
(2b), (3) and (4) appear equally incompatible.
Searle is aware, of course, that the conjunction of (1) and (2) strikes
many philosophers as incompatible. But this is taken by him only as evid-
ence that they are in the grip of conceptual dualism, if not also in the grip
of either Cartesian dualism, property dualism or materialistic monism,
each of which implies conceptual dualism. Conceptual dualism consists in
the view that “. . . in some important sense ‘physical’ implies ‘non-mental’
and ‘mental’ implies ‘non-physical’ ”.14 Conceptual dualism would have
us believe that everything falls under one or the other of two mutually
exclusive categories of existent: mental and physical.
Contemporary physicalism labors under the spell of conceptual dualism
insofar as it is seen to be committed to the Cartesian notion that every
property is either a mental kind or a physical kind, where the extensions
of those kinds are mutually exclusive. And once an immaterial mind is
dropped from our ontology, then it will seem to us that the mental must be
neurophysiological states of brains. But attempting to identify the mental
with what is not mental (e.g., brain states) is preposterous, thinks Searle.
Conceptual dualism, therefore, is false. “The fact that a feature is men-
tal does not imply that it is not physical; the fact that a feature is physical
does not imply that it is not mental . . . Consciousness qua consciousness,
qua mental, qua subjective, qua qualitative is physical, and physical be-
cause mental”15 . What exactly are we to make of this cryptic claim of
Searle’s and of his biological naturalism?

3. A COMMON OBJECTION REJECTED

Some make of Searle’s biological naturalism that it is no more than

warmed over property dualism, a charge Searle explicitly and emphatically
denies.16 Here I think Searle is right. Property dualism consists minimally
in the claim that there are some properties, i.e., mental properties, that
are distinct from physical properties. Searle’s biological naturalism, on the
other hand, seems only to commit him to the claim that some physical
properties are at some level of description mental and that all mental-
properties are at some level of description physical. What exonerates
Searle from all charges of being a property dualist is not the claim that the
categories of “mental” and “physical” sometimes overlap, for a property
312 K. CORCORAN

dualist might countenance not only mixed mental-physical phenomena but

also features that do not land comfortably under either one or the other of
these categories, e.g., features of the world such as points scored in football
games, invitations to parties and denials of tenure. What exonerates Searle
is the fact that for him there appear to be no non-physical properties, i.e.,
the mental, although genuine and irreducible, is for all of that, a natural,
physical phenomenon. So Searle’s biological naturalism is not a version
of property dualism, on the plausible assumption that, at a minimum, a
property dualist insists that some properties (i.e., mental properties) are
distinct from physical properties. If, as Searle claims, mental properties
are at some level of description physical, then Searle is, despite all his
rhetoric to the contrary, a kind of property monist!

4. THE IMPLICIT DUALISM IN SEARLE ’ S BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM

If Searle’s biological naturalism is not a version of property dualism, nor

a version of identity theory, then what, exactly, does his view come to? It
seems to me that what is offered in Rediscovery and elsewhere17 is a cross
pollinated view of the two theories Searle so vociferously rejects – monism
and property dualism, a view for which the term “biological-property du-
alism” might be a more fitting description. In this section, I want to show
just why it is plausible to view Searle’s naturalism as a species of dualism.
Searle’s claim that consciousness is subjective and enjoys a “first-
person existence” is just Searle’s way of saying that consciousness is
always someone’s consciousness (it is necessarily owned) and that sub-
stances that are conscious experience the world from a point-of-view. As a
consequence, mental states are not equally accessible to all observers. As
Searle makes explicit, each conscious substance stands in a unique relation
to the content of her own consciousness.18
This begins to look suspiciously like a notion Searle goes to great
lengths to render implausible, namely, “privileged access” (PA).19 Accord-
ing to champions of PA, there is in the case of consciousness an access
onto the mental that is essentially private, not in the sense that third-person
observers might view the same mental show but only from a third-person
perspective, but rather in the sense that the show is private and inaccess-
ible to third-person observation. Indeed PA is arguably at odds with the
demands of our modern scientific weltanschauung, a world-view Searle
passionately embraces. Nevertheless, taking his cue from Thomas Nagel,20
Searle dismisses as outrageous the view that all reality is “objective”,
although he does not tell us exactly what “objectivism” comes to. One
might take “objectivism” to consist in a rejection of immaterialism and
 THE TROUBLE WITH SEARLE’S BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM 313

therefore to amount to the claim that the world, fundamentally, is entirely

composed of physical particles in fields of force. Since Searle accepts that
claim his rejection of “objectivism” cannot be a rejection of it. His rejec-
tion of the claim that the world is “objective” through-and-through has
to do with it having no place for what he calls “ontological subjectivity”
and the “first-person ontology” of consciousness. And this amounts for
Searle to claiming not only that not all of reality is public in the sense of
all observers having the same kind of access to it, but that there are real
intrinsic features of the world that escape the inspection of third-person
observation altogether. If this is not a vote for privileged access, I don’t
know what is.
What is odd in the extreme, however, is this. What Searle has to say
about the “subjective ontology” of consciousness seems to run orthogonal
to his belief that consciousness is a physical and spatial property of the
brain. The conjunction of these views – consciousness is a biological,
spatial property of brains and consciousness is subjective – would seem to
entail that within the brain itself there are objective properties that are pub-
lic (what any neurosurgeon could see by opening your skull and peering
in) and properties that are not objective in this sense but instead subjective,
i.e., observable only by the subject bearing them.
Here is the problem. When Searle claims that consciousness and mental
states in general are “subjective” he is not thereby giving up the claim that
they are biological, spatial properties of the brain. The view that seems
to emerge from Searle’s biological naturalism, then, is something like the
following. Some physical, biological properties of the brain are segregated
from others such that they are inaccessible to all but the one whose brain
they are properties of. Question: How can some physical and spatial prop-
erties of the brain be accessible only to consciousness itself and what is the
natural explanation for this bifurcation of biological properties within the
brain? Searle does not say.
This is precisely why option (2c) in our previous discussion seems
not to be open to Searle. According to it, mental states are identical with
physical states of the brain, but the physical states of the brain with which
mental states are identical are not any of the particular neural goings-on
in one’s brain. On the contrary, consciousness and the mental are physical
features of the whole brain, not features of any of its parts or their states.
The problem is this. The emergent system-features of liquidity and solid-
ity, for example, with which Searle wants to compare consciousness, are
relevantly dissimilar to consciousness. Solidity and liquidity are open to
third-person observation. Indeed, that a physical, spatial property of a thing
should be in-principle inaccessible to third-person observation is utterly
314 K. CORCORAN

mysterious. What other emergent features of physical systems have that

quality? Indeed, this third-person inaccessibility seems sufficient to make
one wonder whether consciousness really is a physical, spatial property of
brains after all.
What is so perplexing about this picture of bifurcated physical proper-
ties within the brain is what Searle can possibly mean when he says that
consciousness is “. . . an ordinary biological property of the brain”. What is
so ordinary about a brain whose physical properties are divided in the mys-
terious way envisioned by Searle’s biological naturalism? It is precisely
the extraordinary character of consciousness that leads some materialists
to embrace old fashioned property dualism.
It is important to see that although Searle himself rejects dualisms of
both the property and substantial sorts his own biological view seems
nevertheless to reproduce the same divisions of classical dualisms – sub-
jective/objective and first-person/third-person. Indeed for Searle it is a
signal disadvantage of reductive theories of the mind that they always
wind up “leaving out” those features of consciousness that are represented
by the left hand terms in our couplets. Searle’s biological naturalism is
an attempt to reintroduce those features. Of course, in the absence of an
immaterial mind there is just one place to relocate them, and that place
is the brain. What Searle offers us, I suggest, is a version of dualism –
a biological-property version. Hence, I recommend “biological-property
dualism” as a more apt description of Searle’s theory of the mind. Indeed,
given a rejection of identity theory, it seems only a commitment to some
form of biological dualism can possibly render claims (1) and (2) consist-
ent. However, Searle’s own version of dualism seems to fall short of its
aim of rendering (1) and (2) compatible insofar as it fails to explain how
a physical, spatial property of the brain can be in-principle inaccessible
to third person observation. It would seem, in the words of Russell, that
Searle’s biological-property dualism has all the advantages of theft over
honest toil.

5. CONSCIOUSNESS AND REDUCTION

There are other problems with Searle’s biological naturalism. Consider

what Searle says about reduction, for example. Searle says that the pat-
tern of reductions for heat to “mean molecular kinetic energy”, color to
“light reflectances”, lightening to “electrical discharge”, etc., makes con-
sciousness ill-suited for reduction. This is a bit surprising given Searle’s
stout defense of the physical nature of consciousness. Searle seems once
again to be pulled in two contrary directions. To say that conscious-
 THE TROUBLE WITH SEARLE’S BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM 315

ness is irreducible would seem to suggest that it is not physical while

to say that consciousness is reducible would seem to throw into question
its “subjective ontology”. Searle says both, consciousness is and is not
reducible.
In one important sense consciousness is not reducible. In what sense?
In the sense that the usual pattern of reductions is to carve off a perceptual
feature of some phenomenon, an appearance, and then redefine the phe-
nomenon at issue in terms of its underlying physical microstructure. Thus
heat gets defined not in terms of phenomenological feel but rather in terms
of mean molecular kinetic energy. Heat is thus “reduced” from perceived
temperatures to the movement of molecules. But now this is precisely what
Searle claims cannot be done to consciousness. The reduction cannot go
through because unlike the case of heat, where there was a distinction
between the subjective, phenomenological features and the objective phys-
ical reality – a distinction that afforded the carving-off of the one – there
is no such distinction when it comes to subjective experiences themselves.
Consciousness, in other words, consists precisely in subjective appearance
and therefore, as a matter of definition, reduction of it is impossible.
Of course, says Searle, there is a sense in which consciousness is re-
ducible. If we insist on redefining conscious states as patterns of neural
activity that cause those conscious states, then consciousness could be
reduced in the same way as heat, color and lightening. But such a reduction
is pointless because the reduction “still leaves the subjective experience of
pain unreduced, just as the reduction of heat left the subjective experience
of heat unreduced”.21
At the end of the day the irreducibility of consciousness has no meta-
physical bite, since it is “a trivial consequence of the pragmatics of our
definitional practices” and not anything special in “the pattern of facts in
the real world”.22 But why, then, make so much of the claim that con-
sciousness is “irreducible”? The claim loses all its punch as a claim about
our lexical practices. More important, this metaphysically uninteresting
claim does not appear to be the claim Searle is working so hard to establish.
Searle seems to be about trying to convince us of the much more interesting
claim that the mental is real and neither identifiable with a brain state nor
metaphysically reducible. Hence all the talk about “first-person ontology”
and the “subjective ontology of consciousness”, and the like.
Searle’s comparison of consciousness with heat is nevertheless instruct-
ive. For we come to see that it is misleading to talk of “reduction” in the
case of heat. It would be better not to say that heat gets reduced from
perceived temperatures to mean molecular kinetic energy, but that per-
ceived temperatures get left out of the explanatory story, a story about the
316 K. CORCORAN

reduction of macroproperties to microproperties. And of course it is this

explanatory subtraction that Searle maintains cannot be done in the case
of consciousness. But one wonders why, given that Searle himself says we
could “reduce” consciousness by redefining conscious states in terms of
the neural activity that causes them. If so, in what explanatorily relevant
sense is consciousness any different from other physical phenomena like
heat and color?

6. CONCEPTUAL DUALISM RECONSIDERED

Whereas Searle’s discussion of “first-person ontology” and the “subjective

ontology of consciousness” seems to be suggestive of dualism, his claims
about consciousness being physical and therefore spatial is suggestive
of materialistic monism.23 And both materialistic monism and (property)
dualism, according to Searle, imply conceptual dualism.
Consider once again Searle’s claim that consciousness is spatial be-
cause it is located in the brain. This might seem to suggest that intentional-
ity and mental states like belief are physical properties of the brain. Indeed
Searle acknowledges as much. Says Searle:
[F]rom everything we currently know about how the world works . . . .intentional states are
both caused by and realized in the structure of the brain.24

Descartes himself took mental states like belief to be states of an imma-

terial substance, a mind, which is causally connected to a brain. Searle
has dispensed with immaterial substances and so takes mental states to be
physical properties of brains.25 But it is only a commitment to conceptual
dualism which, I suggest, forces one to choose between beliefs as physical
properties of brains and beliefs as states of immaterial minds.
Since Searle provides no argument for why intentional states are phys-
ical properties of brains, let me suggest one line of reasoning for thinking
so. One might think the following options exhaust the logical possibilities:
(i) beliefs are immaterial properties or states (ii) beliefs are physical prop-
erties of brains, i.e., ordinary spatio-temporal entities; or (iii) there are no
such entities as beliefs. Given the almost universal rejection of immaterial-
ism in the philosophy of mind and science, option (i) is assumed by many,
including Searle, to be no option. We seem then to be left with (ii) and (iii).
From (ii) and (iii) we can construct the following argument. Call it D:

(1) Beliefs (if there are any) are either spatio-temporal, i.e., phys-
ical properties of brains or immaterial states of immaterial
minds.
 THE TROUBLE WITH SEARLE’S BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM 317

(2) There are no immaterial minds and so no immaterial states of

them.
Therefore,

(3) Beliefs (if there are any) are physical properties of brains.

D is a valid argument. But if anyone has reason to believe that it is

not sound it is Searle. For premise 1 would appear to be the progeny of
conceptual dualism. It presents us with what one might believe is a false
dichotomy insofar as it implies that when it comes to beliefs we have only
two choices: either they are states of immaterial minds or they are phys-
ical properties of brains. There are other options however.26 I should have
thought that someone like Searle, someone who explicitly eschews concep-
tual dualism, would eschew D, along with its conceptual-dualist premise.
Instead, it looks to me like some such claim as premise 1, and some such
argument as D, leads Searle to construe mental states as physical properties
of brains. If so, then Searle’s commitment to physicalism seems to expose
him to the very conceptual dualism he is so eager to reject.

7. MENTAL CAUSATION : CONCEPTUAL DUALISM REVISITED

So far we have been concerned with various issues bearing on the first
two of the four claims Searle wants to embrace. There is another prob-
lem, however, with Searle’s biological naturalism. This one is related to
the third and fourth of those claims and it concerns the causal efficacy of
mental states. As a reminder, let us set claims three and four before us.

(3) Consciousness is entirely caused by and so wholly explainable

in terms of the behavior of lower-level biological phenomena.

(4) Mental states are causally efficacious, i.e., mental states cause
other mental states as well as causing physiological events.

Let’s take these in order. We have already seen that for Searle, con-
sciousness is not ‘reducible’ in the same way as liquidity and solidity.
What’s the difference? Well, as was noted earlier, the macroproperties of
liquidity and solidity are reductively explainable in terms of microphysical
properties, whereas consciousness, according to Searle, is not. I said earlier
that Searle owes us an explanation of the explanatorily relevant difference
between the two. But what’s more important is this. If an important dif-
ference between a property like consciousness and properties like liquidity
318 K. CORCORAN

and solidity is that the latter are while the former is not explainable in
terms of lower level phenomena, what can Searle possibly mean when he
claims that consciousness is “wholly explainable in terms of the behavior
of lower-level biological phenomena”? This is curious at best. At worst it
is incoherent.
Turning now to claim 4. Jaegwon Kim has criticized Searle’s biological
naturalism for being implicitly committed to “causal-overdetermination”
and implying a failure of “causal-closure” at the microphysical level.27
Searle has responded to Kim, defending the scientific integrity of biolo-
gical naturalism and insisting both that mental-causation is “real” caus-
ation and that so called “top-down” mental-causation is compatible with
deeply entrenched metaphysical doctrines.28 I want briefly to explain just
what is at issue in the debate over mental causation and then go on to
suggest that the shared metaphysical assumptions that underlie the de-
bate between Kim and Searle have their home in the soil of the very
philosophical tradition Searle claims to have rejected.
As we have seen, Searle takes mental states such as desire to be causally
efficacious. The causal chain runs in at least two different directions from
mental states: left to right (mental to mental) and top-down (mental to
physical). The problem of mental causation arises in connection with two
metaphysical theses, nonreductivism and causal closure of the physical
domain (CCP), theses to which Searle himself is committed.
In its essentials, the problem of mental causation may be expressed as
follows. There are two main desiderata associated with a supervenience
view of the mental: (i) to plump for a non-reductive materialism and (ii)
to insist on the dependence of the mental on the physical. When combined
with a commitment to CCP these two goals appear to render the mental epi-
phenomenal. For if the mental is reducible to the physical, then the mental
can be causally efficacious, but only on pain of violating desideratum (i).
On the other hand, if reducibility is rejected in favor of irreducibility, then
there appears to be no room for top-down, mental-physical causation, ow-
ing to the conjunction of desideratum (ii) and CCP. So it seems something
must go; either reject (I) and retain CCP or deny CCP and retain both (i)
and (ii) . Searle, of course, disagrees. He wants it all – CCP, irreducibility
and dependence of the mental on the physical.
To get a grip on the problem of causal overdetermination consider the
following story, inspired by Kim. According to Searle’s biological natur-
alism, a mental property, D – my desire for chocolate-chip cookie dough
ice cream, say – is caused by an instantiation of a certain biological prop-
erty, B. Now assume that D has the power to cause other properties to be
instantiated. Presumably there are two possible scenarios. The properties
 THE TROUBLE WITH SEARLE’S BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM 319

D can cause to be instantiated are other mental-properties (mental-mental

causation) or the properties D can cause to be instantiated are physical
properties (top-down causation).
Consider the first scenario. D causes another mental property, D∗ to
be instantiated – my desire for ice cream causes a numerically distinct
desire to go to the market. But now D∗ , like D itself, is caused by a lower-
level, biological phenomenon, an instantiation of some biological property
B∗ . So D∗ has two distinct sufficient causes, one a mental phenomenon
– D – and the other a biological phenomenon – B∗ . Thus D∗ is causally
overdetermined. The picture then is this:

D → D∗
↑ ↑
B B∗

Notice it will not do to solve the problem by saying that D and D∗ are
themselves biological phenomena, even if mental. For D is either identical
with B∗ or some other lower-level biological phenomenon or not. If it is
identical with one of those, then the mental property of desiring icecream
is a lower-level biological phenomenon. But Searle denies that it is. And
if D is not identical with one of the lower-level biological properties, then
D∗ is still causally overdetermined. For some lower-level biological phe-
nomenon, B∗ , and some (higher) biological phenomenon, D, will be the
sufficient cause of D∗ . So the claim that both D and D∗ are biological even
if mental is no help to Searle. For the problem of causal overdetermination
remains just as it was.29
The causal-closure of the physical domain (CCP) raises a problem
for so called top-down causation. Let us understand by CCP the thesis
that every physical property-instantiation that has a cause at t has a com-
plete physical cause at t. The upshot of CCP is that “when tracing the
causal ancestry of a physical event, we need never go outside the physical
domain”.30 But now assuming CCP, what becomes of peculiarly mental
causation of the physical? Put another way, given CCP, what causal relev-
ance does my desire for ice cream have with respect to my getting up out
of my chair and heading for the market, assuming the falsity of mental-
physical identity? If we take “tryings” and “desires” and “beliefs” to be
causally relevant, then prima facie it looks like we violate CCP. For we are
claiming, in opposition to CCP, that a complete explanation of my going
to the market cannot exclude my desire.31
Here it seems a plausible solution is near to hand. For Searle could
simply say that the problem is founded on the false assumption that the
mental is not physical. Therefore, since the mental is physical, we do not
320 K. CORCORAN

have to go outside the physical domain in order to explain how my desire

causes me to get up and go to the store. This much granted.
When Searle makes the bold claim, however, that the solution to all of
the problems surrounding mental causation are easily solved because “the
same system admits of different causal descriptions at different levels all
of which are consistent and none of which implies either overdetermina-
tion or failure of causal closure”,32 he is only half right. He is wrong to
think that this solves the problem of causal overdetermination, but right
to point out that there is nothing about biological naturalism’s account of
the mental that implies a violation of CCP. However, there are still puzzles
that cluster around top-down, mental physical causation. Consider, for ex-
ample, the following claim of Searle’s. “[T]hat the higher mental state[s]
cause the lower order physiological event[s] . . . does not imply failure of
causal closure, overdetermination, epiphenomenalism or any other para-
doxes; and this is because the top level, though causally real, is realized
in the lower levels and...top down causation works across time”33 The
problem here is just that Searle fails to tell us how we are to interpret
the bit about the “reality” of the top level being “realized in”, or as he says
elsewhere “grounded in”, the lower levels. What exactly does the “realized
in”/“grounded in” relation come to? Reduction? Unlikely. Supervenience?
That won’t do, at least not when combined with a commitment to CCP.
For as we have seen, CCP is partly responsible for creating the problem.
Moreover, as Jaegwon Kim has recently pointed out, reducibility can no
longer be rejected in favor of supervenience, as “. . . both emergentism
and the view that the mental must be physically realized . . . imply mind-
body supervenience”.34 In other words, supervenience is open for both
reducibility and irreducibility.
The problem of mental causation arises only within the materialist
environment that spawns the twin theses of nonreductivism and causal
closure of the physical, the two theses that generate the problems in the
first place. But those theses, and that environment, are the warp and woof
of the materialist side of conceptual dualism, a dualism Searle claims to
have rejected. Someone who rejects conceptual dualism would be better
off, I submit, rejecting either nonreductivism or CCP and rethinking the
notion of causation. Either tack would dissolve the putative problem of
mental causation.35 That Searle accepts the terms of the debate shows to
just what extent he is still enmeshed in the philosophical tradition he claims
to have rejected. And that tradition seems to produce a problem it lacks the
resources to solve plausibly.
 THE TROUBLE WITH SEARLE’S BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM 321

8. CONCLUSION

Searle’s biological naturalism is committed to four claims that seem to

require either a commitment to dualism (of some stripe or other) or materi-
alistic monism in order to be compatible. Despite the fact that Searle claims
to reject both dualism (of any sort) and materialistic monism, his own view
seems nevertheless to be a version of dualism. But the biological version of
dualism offered by Searle has problems. It purports to be a replacement of
the conceptual dualist, philosophical tradition. It is not. For his biological
dualism finds its home in that very tradition. Indeed Searle’s commitment
to nonreductivism and causal closure not only belies his rejection of the
tradition, but it also creates a problem that his biological naturalism lacks
the resources to solve plausibly. The conclusion I draw from these obser-
vations is that Searle’s biological naturalism is in serious trouble. It seems
to make clear that when it comes to mind the only plausible theories are
identity theories and dualist theories. We’ve been hearing a lot about the
former for some time. Recently, however, we have begun to see interesting
and coherent varieties of the latter.36 My point in this paper, however, is a
modest one. It is simply that Searle’s biological naturalism is not coherent
and it does not escape the problems that confront it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank two anonymous referees of this journal for helpful com-
ments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks also to participants in the
Tuesday afternoon philosophy colloquium at Calvin, and especially Jeff
Brower, for helpful criticisms and suggestions on an earlier version of this
paper.

NOTES

1 John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, 1992, p. 85.

2 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 13.
3 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 93.
4 See his “Consciousness, the Brain and the Connection Principle: A Reply”, in Philo-
sophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (1995) 217–232.
5 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 86.
6 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 89.
7 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 112.
322 K. CORCORAN

8 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 92. Emphasis mine.

9 Notice that the dependence claimed by supervenience goes only one way. Supervenience
does not claim that sameness of mental properties implies sameness of microphysical prop-
erties of brains. This allows for so called “multiple-realization”, i.e., the brain of a dog and
that of a human, for instance, may both token the mental-type pain, but the microphysical
properties that token ‘pain’ in dogs need not be of the same type as the microphysical
properties that token pain in humans.
10 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 94.
11 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 95.
12 See Searle’s “Consciousness, the Brain and the Connection Principle: A Reply”,
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (1995, p. 219).
13 If Searle’s biological naturalism had a more Nagelian cast, then the conjunction of (1)
and (2) would be rendered more intelligible, at least prima facie. For in that case while it is
true that mental states are essentially subjective whereas physical states are objective it is
nevertheless also the case that subjective particulars occupy the spatio-temporal world of
physical things, entering into relations with physical particulars. In other words, as Nagel
argues, the mental has an objective aspect. Searle himself does not seem content to settle
for a double-aspect theory of the mental, however.
14 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 26.
15 Searle, Rediscovery, pp. 14–15
16 Searle, Rediscovery, pp. 13–14.
17 “Consciousness, the Brain and the Connection Principle”, ibid.
18 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 95.
19 Searle, Rediscovery, pp. 98–100.
20 The View From Nowhere, Oxford University Press, 1996, especially chapter 1.
21 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 121.
22 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 122 and 124.
23 Searle, Rediscovery, p. 108.
24 John Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge University
Press, 1983, p. 15.
25 On my view, not everyone committed to the claim that beliefs are physical states of
brains is committed to the view that such are identical (type or token) with brain states. I
mean to include functionalist theories and constitution theories as well.
26 The option I prefer is that beliefs are states of whole persons. Brains have neural states.
Persons like me have beliefs. For such an account of beliefs see Lynne Rudder Baker’s Ex-
plaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind (Cambridge University Press, 1995),
chapter 6. There is also, of course, the rather obvious option that beliefs are emergent,
non-physical states of brains.
27 Jaegwon Kim, ‘Mental Causation in Searle’s Biological Naturalism’, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 55 (1995) 189–194.
28 See Searle’s reply to Kim, ‘Consciousnesss, the Brain and the Connection: A Reply’, in
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (1995) 217–232.
29 Perhaps Searle’s point is that if D is the sufficient cause for B∗ and B∗ is the sufficient
cause for D∗ , then yes, B∗ and D are both sufficient causes for D∗ . But this so-called over-
determination is harmless since D is only indirectly casually responsible for D∗ whereas
B∗ is directly causally responsible for it. The harmful sort of overdetermination, Searle
might mean to say, involves two sufficient and direct causes of a single phenomenon. Given
 THE TROUBLE WITH SEARLE’S BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM 323

the opportunity, however, Searle says nothing of the sort. So it is plausible to suppose
that this is not what Searle had in mind. I shall take up what Searle does say shortly.
Yet another view also worth mentioning is the view that the mental is irreducible but has
supervenient causal powers not implying downward causation. See for example Achim
Stephan’s ‘Armchair Arguments Against Emergentism’, Erkenntnis 46 (1997) 305–314.
30 “The Myth of Non-Reductive Materialism”, reprinted in Supervenience and Mind,
Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 280.
31 Considerations such as these lead Kim to claim that mental causation is epiphenomenal.
32 ‘Consciousness, the Brain and the Connection Principle: A Reply’, in Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 55 (1995) p. 219.
33 ‘Consciousness, the Brain and the Connection Principle: A Reply’, in Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 55 (1995) p. 219.
34 See Jaegwon Kim, Mind in a Physical World, MIT Press, 1998, 12.
35 Lynne Rudder Baker argues along these lines. She claims, rightly in my opinion, that
the two metaphysical theses that generate the problem of mental-causation – supervenience
and CCP – actually render the problem unanswerable. See her “Metaphysics and Mental
Causation” in John Heil and Alfred Mele (eds.), Mental Causation, Clarendon Press, Ox-
ford, 1995, 75–95. I add here only that Searle’s commitment to these theses reveals the
extent to which he is still inextricably bound to the philosophical tradition of materialism,
a tradition he brazenly attacks as misguided.
36 For some interesting non traditional varieties of dualism see the essays by Lowe, Hasker,
O’Connor in my Soul, Body and Survival, Cornell University Press, 2001.

REFERENCES

Hasker, W.: 2001, ‘Persons as Emergent Substances’, in Kevin Corcoran (ed.), Soul, Body
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Kim, J.: 1995, ‘Mental Causation in Searle’s Biological Naturalism’, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 55, 189–194.
Kim, J.: 1998, Mind in a Physical World, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Lowe, E. J.: 2001, ‘Identity, Composition and the Simplicity of the Self’, in Kevin
Corcoran (ed.), Soul, Body and Survival, Cornell University Press.
Nagel, T.: 1996, The View From Nowhere, Oxford University Press, chapter 1.
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and Survival, Cornell University Press.
Rudder-Baker, L.: 1995, Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind, Cam-
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Rudder-Baker, L.: 1995, ‘Metaphysics and Mental Causation’, in John Heil and Alfred
Mele (eds), Mental Causation, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Searle, J.: 1983, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge University
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Searle, J.: 1995, ‘Consciousness, the Brain and the Connection Principle: A Reply’,
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55, 217–232.
324 K. CORCORAN

Stephan, A.; 1997, ‘Armchair Arguments Against Emergentism’, Erkenntnis 46, 305–314.

Department of Philosophy
Calvin College
3201 Burton Street
Grand Rapids MI 49546
U.S.A.