One of the world's most important philosophers of mind and language, John Searle (b. 1932) is direct, combative, and intellectually ambitious. His philosophy has made fundamental and lasting contributions to how we think about speech, consciousness, knowledge, truth, and the nature of social reality. Here, with remarkable clarity, a leading authority introduces students and generalists to those contributions.

Nick Fotion explains Searle's ideas in full, while also testing and exploring their implications. He first takes up Searle's philosophy of language, examining how Searle...