Pack Thinkers
Portrait of John Searle

20th century · 1932–2025

Who influenced John Searle?

Influences

Speech acts, intentionality, and the Chinese room against strong AI.

John Searle was influenced by J. L. Austin. That is 1 line of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.

Read on Wikipedia Portrait: FranksValli, CC BY-SA 4.0 See the whole map

Who was John Searle?

John Searle made his name with work on speech acts, building on J. L. Austin and Wittgenstein, and wrote widely on the philosophy of mind and society. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley until 2019, when he lost his post after a finding of sexual harassment.

His best-known contribution is the "Chinese room" argument against the possibility of strong artificial intelligence.

Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.

Who influenced John Searle?

1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.

The line of teachers behind John Searle

The longest documented line of influence ending at John Searle runs 28 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.

  1. Thales of Miletus
  2. Anaximenes of Miletus
  3. Anaxagoras
  4. Socrates
  5. Antisthenes
  6. Diogenes of Sinope
  7. Crates of Thebes
  8. Zeno of Citium
  9. Seneca
  10. Tertullian
  11. Augustine of Hippo
  12. Anselm of Canterbury
  13. Peter Lombard
  14. Thomas Aquinas
  15. René Descartes
  16. Thomas Hobbes
  17. Baruch Spinoza
  18. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
  19. Christian Wolff
  20. Immanuel Kant
  21. Johann Gottlieb Fichte
  22. F. W. J. Schelling
  23. Georg W. F. Hegel
  24. T. H. Green
  25. F. H. Bradley
  26. Bertrand Russell
  27. Ludwig Wittgenstein
  28. J. L. Austin
  29. John Searle

Two steps away from John Searle

Indirect influences

Contemporaries of John Searle

Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of John Searle, with no direct line between them.

John Searle by the numbers

Direct influences
1
Direct followers
0
Thinkers upstream
122
Thinkers downstream
0
Wikipedia languages
43 — #56 of 84 among 20th-century philosophers
Card rarity
Rare

Questions about John Searle

Who influenced John Searle?
J. L. Austin.
Who did John Searle influence?
No later thinker on this map is recorded as drawing directly on John Searle.
When did John Searle live?
1932–2025. The map files John Searle under the 20th century.
How rare is the John Searle card?
Wikipedia carries an article on John Searle in 43 languages, which makes it a Rare card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.

More 20th-century philosophers

All 279 thinkers