DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

Reasoning in a Causal Gap

Rationality in Action
By John R. Searle. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. 300 pp. Cloth, $35.00; Paper, $16.95.

Psychologists interested in human agency or in explaining human behavior will find the philosopher John Searle's Rationality in Action a stimulating read. Searle is a realist, a naturalist committed to the proposition that consciousness is a biological phenomenon, that all conscious states are natural features of the brain caused by neural processes. Searle's understanding of human agency may surprise some readers, but it is an extension and application of his earlier study of Speech Acts (1969) and his study of how mental states represent the world (Intentionality, 1983).