What disagreement do you have with any of John Searles' major philosophical positions?

From what I’ve read, I probably have a 65/35 relationship with Searle’s work: 65% in agreement, 35% in disagreement. This hasn’t always been the case, as I initially found his naturalism and propensity to embrace “the myth of the given” (Sellars) — and then declare this to be “rational” when it is just another form of bias — rubbed me the wrong way. But the more I read, the more agreement I found. Here are examples of some current positions:

1. Disagreement with his intentionality or representational provision for mental states: desire can be just as amorphous and undirected as anxiety, for example. Similarly, non-conscious mentations are critical…and likely both vast and substantive supportive structures for consciousness…so I disagree with Searle’s seeming dismissal of anything that isn’t destined “to become conscious” — that is, directed or representational.

2. Agreement with mind being a biologically dependent phenomenon — up to a point. While his criticisms of AI resonate with my own views, I disagree that that there are no other, nonbiological structures in play for human beings; for example, transpersonal and transcendent ones.

3. Agreement with the importance of indeterminism in consciousness and free will…though I haven’t fully bought into quantum consciousness as a model yet (I just find it intriguing).

4. Agreement with Searle’s views about direct perception (of things-in-themselves), but I have arrived there differently, going beyond Searle’s subjectivity and biological dependencies, and instead making allowance for spiritual or mystical perception-cognition (*gnosis*).

5. Agreement — on the whole — with his proposed interplay of mentation, intentions, language and collective (institutional) reality. Brilliant stuff. Again, though, I would say “there is more;” for example, that there is intrinsic morality that is non-institutional.

I discuss many of my own views on these topics in my books, particularly Memory : Self (available here for perusal: Integral Lifework, Memory : Self), The_Goldilocks_Zone_of_Integral_Liberty, Sector Theory 1.0 – Todd's Take on Epistemology, etc.
My 2 cents.

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