Galen Strawson

The sense of the self -- A fallacy of our age -- I have no future -- Luck swallows everything -- You cannot make yourself the way you are -- The silliest claim -- Real naturalism -- The unstoried life -- Two years' time

Death, Freedom, the Self, Etc

Things that Bother Me

an essay in revisionary metaphysics

Selves

Peter Carruthers

Frank Jackson

et al.

Colin McGinn

David Papineau

William G. Lycan

Georges Rey

J.J.C. Smart

Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?

Consciousness and Its Place in Nature

On the whole, we continue to believe firmly both that we have free will and that we are morally responsible for what we do. Here, the author argues that there is a fundamental sense in which there is no such thing as free will or true moral responsibility (as ordinarily understood). Devoting the main body of his book to an attempt to explain why we continue to believe as we do, Strawson examines various aspects of the "cognitive phenomenology" of freedom--the nature, causes, and consequences of our deep commitment to belief in freedom.

Freedom and Belief

`An engaging and challenging book that should be studied by anyone committed to the topic of freedom.' --Book Jacket.

Real Materialism is a collection of highly original essays on a set of related topics in philosophy of mind and metaphysics: consciousness and the mind-body problem; our knowledge of the world; the nature of the self or subject; free will and moral responsibility; the nature of thought and intentionality; causation and David Hume.

And Other Essays

Real Materialism

An argument against neobehaviorism and for "naturalized Cartesianism," which couples a wholly materialist approach to the mind with a fully realist attitude to the phenomena of conscious experience. In Mental Reality, Galen Strawson argues that much contemporary philosophy of mind gives undue primacy of place to publicly observable phenomena, nonmental phenomena, and behavioral phenomena (understood as publicly observable phenomena) in its account of the nature of mind. It does so at the expense of the phenomena of conscious experience. Strawson describes an alternative position, "naturalized Cartesianism," which couples the materialist view that mind is entirely natural and wholly physical with a fully realist account of the nature of conscious experience. Naturalized Cartesianism is an adductive (as opposed to reductive) form of materialism. Adductive materialists don't claim that conscious experience is anything less than we ordinarily conceive it to be, in being wholly physical. They claim instead that the physical is something more than we ordinarily conceive it to be, given that many of the wholly physical goings on in the brain constitute—literally are—conscious experiences as we ordinarily conceive them. Since naturalized Cartesianism downgrades the place of reference to nonmental and publicly observable phenomena in an adequate account of mental phenomena, Strawson considers in detail the question of what part such reference still has to play. He argues that it is a mistake to think that all behavioral phenomena are publicly observable phenomena.This revised and expanded edition of Mental Reality includes a new appendix, which thoroughly revises the account of intentionality given in chapter 7.

Mental Reality, second edition, with a new appendix

Gehört es zum Wesen des menschlichen Selbst, dass sein Leben wie eine Geschichte erzählt werden kann? – Galen Strawson ist maßlos neugierig, ungemein gelehrt, ohne jede Scheu vor abwegigen, schwierigen oder provokanten Thesen. Selbst wenn man ihm in seinen Anschauungen nicht beipflichten möchte, folgt man seinen Fragestellungen und Argumentationen gespannt, ja belebt und äußerst angeregt!

Tod, Freiheit, Ich ...

Was mich umtreibt

Real Materialism draws together papers written over twenty years by Galen Strawson in philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Strawson focuses on five main areas of enquiry: [1] the nature of the physical, consciousness, the 'mind-body problem', and the prospects for panpsychism; [2] the self, the subject of experience, self-consciousness, and the 'narrative' self; [3] free will and moral responsibility; [4] the nature of thought and intentionality and their connection with consciousness; [5] the problem of causation with particular reference to the philosophy of David Hume.

and Other Essays

An original collection of lauded philosopher Galen Strawson's writings on the self and consciousness, naturalism and pan-psychism. Galen Strawson might be described as the Montaigne of modern philosophers, endlessly curious, enormously erudite, unafraid of strange, difficult, and provocative propositions, and able to describe them clearly—in other words, he is a true essayist. Strawson also shares with Montaigne a particular fascination with the elastic and elusive nature of the self and of consciousness. Of the essays collected here, “A Fallacy of Our Age” (an inspiration for Vendela Vida’s novel Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name) takes issue with the commencement-address cliché that life is a story. Strawson questions whether it is desirable or even meaningful to think about life that way. “The Sense of the Self” offers an alternative account, in part personal, of how a distinct sense of self is not at all incompatible with a sense of the self as discontinuous, leading Strawson to a position that he sees as in some ways Buddhist. “Real Naturalism” argues that a fully naturalist account of consciousness supports a belief in the immanence of consciousness in nature as a whole (also known as panpsychism), while in the final essay Strawson offers a vivid account of coming of age in the 1960s. Drawing on literature and life as much as on philosophy, this is a book that prompts both argument and wonder.

Death, Freedom, the Self, Etc.

Things That Bother Me

For the last five years philosopher Galen Strawson has provoked a mixture of shock and scepticism with his carefully argued case that physicalism (the view that every real, concrete phenomenon in the universe is physical) entails panpsychism (the view that the existence of every real concrete thing involves experiential being). In this book Strawson provides the fullest and most careful statement of his position to date, throwing down the gauntlet to his critics -- including Peter Carruthers, Frank Jackson, David Rosenthal and J.J.C. Smart -- by inviting them to respond in print. The book concludes with Strawson's response to his commentators. Galen Strawson's books include Mental Reality, The Self? and Freedom and Belief.

This collection of philosophical papers reflects on the existence and nature of the self. A collection of philosophical papers devoted to the subject of the self. Reflects on key questions about the existence and nature of the self. Comprises contributions from leading authorities in the field: Barry Dainton, Ingmar Persson, Marya Schechtman, Galen Strawson, Bas van Fraassen, and Peter van Inwagen.

The Self?

The Subject of Experience is about the self, the person. It takes the form of a series of essays which draw on literature and psychology as well as philosophy. Galen Strawson discusses the phenomenology or experience of having or being a self (What is the character of self-experience?) and the fundamental metaphysics of the self (Does the self exist? If so, what is its nature? How long do selves last?): he develops an approach to the metaphysical questions out of the results of the phenomenological investigation. He argues that it is legitimate to say that there is such a thing as the self as distinct from the human being. At the same time he raises doubts about how long selves can be supposed to last, insofar as they are distinct from human beings. He also raises a doubt about whether a self (or indeed a human being) can really be said to lose anything in dying. He criticizes the popular notion of the narrative self, and considers the differences between 'Endurers' or 'Diachronic' people, who feel that they are the same person when they consider their past and future, and 'Transients' or 'Episodic' people, who do not feel this. He considers the first-person pronoun 'I' and a number of puzzles raised by the phenomena of self-reference and self-knowledge. He examines Locke's, Hume's and Kant's accounts of the mind and personal identity, and argues that Locke and Hume have been badly misunderstood.

The Subject of Experience

John Locke's theory of personal identity underlies all modern discussion of the nature of persons and selves—yet it is widely thought to be wrong. In this book, Galen Strawson argues that in fact it is Locke’s critics who are wrong, and that the famous objections to his theory are invalid. Indeed, far from refuting Locke, they illustrate his fundamental point. Strawson argues that the root error is to take Locke’s use of the word "person" as merely a term for a standard persisting thing, like "human being." In actuality, Locke uses "person" primarily as a forensic or legal term geared specifically to questions about praise and blame, punishment and reward. This point is familiar to some philosophers, but its full consequences have not been worked out, partly because of a further error about what Locke means by the word "conscious." When Locke claims that your personal identity is a matter of the actions that you are conscious of, he means the actions that you experience as your own in some fundamental and immediate manner. Clearly and vigorously argued, this is an important contribution both to the history of philosophy and to the contemporary philosophy of personal identity.

Galen Strawson

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