John Searle

In How To Take Smart Notes, John Searle is cited for a line that captures the book’s central test for genuine understanding: “If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself.” The quote reinforces Sönke Ahrens’s argument that writing notes in one’s own words — rather than copying — is the act that reveals (and forces) real comprehension.

Context: John Searle (b. 1932) is an American philosopher long associated with the University of California, Berkeley, known for work in the philosophy of language and mind, including speech act theory and the “Chinese Room” argument about machine understanding.

Where this appears

• How To Take Smart Notes — quoted (“if you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself”) on clear writing as the test of understanding