Abstract

John Searle and Daniel Dennett have had their horns locked over different issues in the philosophy of mind for close to two decades. Both participants state that their disagreement is about such things as the nature of consciousness, the viability of strong artificial intelligence, the possibility of zombies, and other such issues. After close to two decades of debate about the same set of issues, one should suspect that perhaps something deeper is responsible for generating and sustaining this apparent disagreement. ;This deeper level to a debate is the level that must be examined if there is going to be any hope of terminating this debate. Searle and Dennett have been arguing past each other by focusing on the wrong set of concerns. Searle and Dennett should be mindful of some of the implicit presuppositions that are responsible for generating and maintaining their debate. ;This project does not attempt to defend either Searle's or Dennett's particular theory. Rather it attempts to show that the various objections each makes against the other reduce to different Implicit Presuppositions Matrixes . The Dennett/Searle debate serves as a test case for the IPM thesis. To help clarify the IPM thesis and illuminate its strengths in dealing with this debate and others of its kind, it is compared to three theories which bear a resemblance to it: W. T. Jones's theory on World Views, Walter Watson's theory on Archic variables, and Tom Kuhn's theory of paradigms and paradigm shifts. Once the deficiencies of these theses in dealing with the Dennett/Searle debate are exposed, the strengths of the IPM thesis in dealing with this debate is further addressed.