Galen Strawson
Galen Strawson | |
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Born | 1952 (age 71–72) England |
Nationality | British |
Education | Realistic physicalism |
Website | Galen Strawson's personal site |
Galen John Strawson (born 1952) is a British
Education and career
Strawson, the elder son of Oxford philosopher
Strawson taught at the University of Oxford from 1979 to 2000, first as a Stipendiary Lecturer at several different colleges, and then, from 1987 on, as
Philosophical work
Free will
In the free will debate, Strawson holds that there is a fundamental sense in which free will is impossible, whether determinism is true or not. He argues for this position with what he calls his "basic argument", which aims to show that no-one is ever ultimately morally responsible for their actions, and hence that no one has free will in the sense that usually concerns us. In its simplest form, the basic argument runs thus:
- You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.
- To be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain crucial mental respects.
- But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.
- So you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do.[4]
This argument resembles Arthur Schopenhauer's position in On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, summarised by E. F. J. Payne as the "law of motivation, which states that a definite course of action inevitably ensues on a given character and motive".[5]
Panpsychism
Strawson has argued that what he calls "
Publications
Books
- Freedom and Belief (1986), ISBN 0-19-823933-5
- The Secret Connexion (1989), ISBN 0-19-824038-4
- Mental Reality (1994), ISBN 0-262-19352-3
- The Self? (editor) (2005), ISBN 1-4051-2987-5
- Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does physicalism entail panpsychism? (2006), ISBN 1-84540-059-3
- Real Materialism and Other Essays (2008), ISBN 978-0-19-926743-9
- Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics (2009), ISBN 978-0-19-825006-7
- The Evident Connexion: Hume on Personal Identity (2011), ISBN 978-0-19-960850-8
- Locke on Personal Identity: Consciousness and Concernment (2011), ISBN 978-0-691-14757-4
- The Subject of Experience (2017), ISBN 978-0198777885
- Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, The Self etc. (2018) (New York Review of Books Inc.)
- Consciousness and Its Place in Nature, 2nd revised and expanded edition, ed. A. Freeman and G. Horswell, (Exeter: Imprint Academic) [7 May 2024], ISBN 978-1788361187
Selected articles
- "Red and 'Red'" (1989), Synthèse 78, pp. 193–232.
- "The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility" (1994), Philosophical Studies 75, pp. 5–24.
- "'The Self" (1997), Journal of Consciousness Studies 4, pp. 405–28.
- "The bounds of freedom" (2001), in The Oxford Handbook on Free Will, ed. R. Kane (Oxford University Press), pp. 441–60.
- "Hume on himself" (2001), in Essays in Practical Philosophy: From Action to values, ed. D. Egonsson, J. Josefsson, B. Petersson and T. Rønnow-Rasmussen (Aldershot: Ashgate Press), pp. 69–94.
- "Real Materialism" [permanent dead link] (2003), in Chomsky and his Critics, ed. L. Antony and N. Hornstein (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 49–88.
- "Mental ballistics: the involuntariness of spontaneity" (2003), Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, pp. 227–56.
- "A Fallacy of our Age" ('Against Narrative') in the Times Literary Supplement, 15 October 2004
- "Against Narrativity" (2004), Ratio 17, pp. 428–52.
- "Gegen die Narrativität" (2005), revised and expanded version of "Against Narrativity" in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 53, pp. 3–22.
- "Episodic ethics" (2005) in Narrative and Understanding Person, ed. D. Hutto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 85–115.
- "Why I have no future" (2009) The Philosophers' Magazine, Issue 38
- "Against 'corporism': the two uses of I" (2009) Organon F 16, pp. 428–448.
- "The Self" in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, ed. B. McLaughlin and A. Beckermann (Oxford University Press), pp. 541–64.
- "5 Questions on Mind and Consciousness" (2009), in Mind and Consciousness: 5 Questions (AutomaticPress/VIP,) pp. 191–204.
- "5 Questions on Action" (2009), in Philosophy of Action: 5 Questions (AutomaticPress/VIP), pp. 253–9.
- "On the SESMET theory of subjectivity" (2009), in Mind That Abides, ed. D. Skrbina (Amsterdam: John Benjamins), pp. 57–64.
- "The identity of the categorical and the dispositional" (2008), Analysis 68/4, pp. 271–8.
- "Radical Self-Awareness" (2010), in Self, No Self?: Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions, ed. M. Siderits, E. Thompson, and D. Zahavi (Oxford University Press), pp. 274–307.
- "The depth(s) of the twentieth century" (2010), Analysis 70/4:1.
- "Fundamental Singleness: subjects as objects (how to turn the first two Paralogisms into valid arguments)" (2010), in The Metaphysics of Consciousness, ed. P. Basile et al.(Cambridge University Press), pp. 61–92.
- "Narrativity and non-Narrativity" (2010), in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 1, pp. 775–80.
- "Cognitive phenomenology: real life" (2011), in Cognitive Phenomenology, ed.T. Bayne and M. Montague (Oxford University Press), pp. 285–325.
- "The impossibility of ultimate responsibility?" in Free Will and Modern Science, ed. R. Swinburne (London: British Academy) (December), pp. 126–40.
- "Owning the Past: Reply to Stokes" (2011), Journal of Consciousness Studies 18, pp. 170–95.
- "The minimal self" (2011), in Oxford Handbook of the Self, ed. S. Gallagher (Oxford University Press), pp. 253–278.
- "Real naturalism" (2012), in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 86/2, pp. 125–154.
- "I and I: immunity to error through misidentification of the subject" (2012), in Immunity to Error Through Misidentification: New Essays, ed. S. Prosser and F. Recanati (Cambridge University Press)
- "All My Hopes Vanish: Hume’s Appendix" (2012), in The Continuum Companion to Hume, ed. A Bailey and D. O’Brien (London: Continuum)
- "We live beyond any tale that we happen to enact" (2012), in Harvard Review of Philosophy 18, pp. 73–90.
- "Free will" (2015), in Norton Introduction to Philosophy, ed. A. Byrne, J. Cohen, G. Rosen and S. Shiffrin (New York:Norton)
- "Real direct realism" (2015), in The Nature of Phenomenal Qualities, ed. P. Coates and S. Coleman (Oxford University Press)
- "Nietzsche’s metaphysics?" (2015), in Nietzsche on Mind and Nature, ed.M. Dries and P. Kail (Oxford University Press)
- "When I enter most intimately into what I call myself" (2015), in Oxford Handbook of David Hume ed. Paul Russell (Oxford University Press)
- "The unstoried life" (2015), in On Life-Writing, ed. Z. Leader (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
- "'The secrets of all hearts': Locke on personal identity" (2015), in Mind, Self, and Person, ed. A. O'Hear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
- "Mind and being: the primacy of panpsychism", in Panpsychism: Philosophical Essays, ed. G. Bruntrup and L. Jaskolla (New York: Oxford University Press)
- "The concept of consciousness in the twentieth century" (2016), in Consciousness, ed. A. Simmons (New York: Oxford University Press)
- "Narrative bypassing", in A New Approach to Studies of the Self, ed. N. Praetorius, Journal of Consciousness Studies 16, pp. 125–139
- "Conceivability and the silence of physics" (2017), Journal of Consciousness Studies
- "Descartes's mind" (2017), in Descartes and Cartesianism: Essays in Honour of Desmond Clarke, ed. S. Gaukroger and C. Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
- "Consciousness never left" (2017), in The Return of Consciousness, ed. K. Almqvist and A. Haag (Stockholm: Axel and Margaret Axson Johnson Foundation)
- "Physicalist panpsychism" (2017), in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, 2nd ed, ed. S. Schneider and M. Velmans (New York: Wiley-Blackwell)
- "What does 'physical' mean? A prolegomenon to physicalist panpsychism", in Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism
- "Descartes and the Buddha—a rapprochement?" in Reasons and Empty Persons: Mind, Metaphysics, and Morality: Essays in Honor of Mark Siderits, ed. C. Coseru (Springer, 2023) pp. 63-86
- "Blockers and laughter: panpsychism, archepsychism, pantachepsychism", in second revised and expanded edition of Consciousness and its Place in Nature, ed. A Freeman, Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2024 [forthcoming 2024]
See also
Notes
- ^ Galen Strawson, "Real Direct Realism", a lecture recorded 2014 at Marc Sanders Foundation, Vimeo.
- ^ "UT College of Liberal Arts". Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 22 September 2015.
- ^ "Leiter, Brian." Archived 29 August 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Strawson, Galen. "Free Will Archived 25 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine" in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (1998); "The Bounds of Freedom" in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, ed. Robert Kane (2002).
- ^ E. F. J. Payne, in his Translator's Introduction to Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation
- ^ a b c d Strawson, G. (2006) "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism", Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 13, Nos. 10–11, Exeter, Imprint Academic pp. 3–31
- ^ Skrbina, D. (2005), Panpsychism in the West, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.
References
- Feinberg, Joel; Shafer-Landau, Russ: Reason & Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy: Thirteenth Edition (Thomson Wadsworth, 2008).
External links
- Galen Strawson Personal Website
- Galen Strawson at the University of Texas at Austin
- Galen Strawson at the University of Reading
- "Free Will" an entry by Strawson in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- "I am not a story" Archived 5 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine an article by Strawson in Aeon magazine
- "You Cannot Make Yourself the Way You Are" – Strawson interviewed by Tamler Sommers, The Believer, March 2003 (Also published under the title "The Buck Stops—Where? Living Without Ultimate Moral Responsibility" at Naturalism.org).
- Good and Evil, 1 April 1999, BBC Radio program In Our Time
- Virtue, 28 February 2002, BBC Radio program In Our Time
- Free Will, 10 March 2011, BBC Radio program In Our Time
- Evil, 5 August 2015, BBC Radio Program Moral Maze
- "Things That Bother Me by Galen Strawson — a case for mistaken identity", review of Things that Bother Me by Jonathan Derbyshire in the Financial Times, 13 April 2018
- "Brimming with X", book review of Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind: The new science of psychedelics, in the Times Literary Supplement, August 8, 2018
- "Galileo’s Error by Philip Goff review – a new science of consciousness", book review of Philip Goff's Galileo’s Error, in The Guardian, 27 December 2019
- "Why? The Purpose of the Universe by Philip Goff review – a real poser", book review of Philip Goff's Why? The Purpose of the Universe in The Guardian, 28 December 2023