John Searle

John Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at U.C. Berkeley. He is widely noted for his work on philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and social philosophy.

Biological Naturalism
In Searle's discussion of consciousness and the Mind-Body Problem, he rejects the formal Cartesian view of the relationship between physical and mental substances in favor of a sort of naturalism. Searle asserts that consciousness is a biological phenomenon. While he is an anti-reductionist about consciousness, he asserts that his anti-reductionism does not eliminate physical causation, and that the cause of mental states is purely physical. Searle offers a wholesale rejection of the concept of the immaterial and immortal soul.