WITTGENSTEIN AND THE BACKGROUND

Searle discusses the subject he calls the Background, where his views are explicitly influenced by Wittgenstein. In its simplest form, the Background is the claim that linguistic meaning in particular and all intentionality in general only function given a Background of abilities, capacities, tendencies, dispositions, and other causal structures that do not themselves consist of meanings or other intentional phenomena. In order to work with such things as sentences, beliefs, and desires, one has to have a set of abilities that do not themselves consist entirely in more sentences, beliefs, and desires.