John R. Searle is noted for contributing to the philosophy of language a theory of speech acts and a theory of intentionality. He has also written extensively on the philosophy of mind; here he is particularly noted for his "Chinese Room Argument," a much-debated attack on the view that the mind is a computer program. In social philosophy he has developed a theory of human institutions that employs the ideas he developed earlier for his theories of speech acts and intentionality.

John Rogers Searle was born on 31 July 1932 in Denver, Colorado, to George W. Searle, an electrical engineer employed by the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company, and Hester Beck Searle, a physician in general practice. Both parents came from families that had been in the United States for several generations; Searle is named after an ancestor on his father's side, John Rogers, who came to America on...