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2271Mind and Being: The Primacy of PanpsychismIn Godehard Brüntrup & Ludwig Jaskolla (eds.), Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives, Oxford University Press. pp. 000-00. 2016.I endorse a 12-word metaphysics. [1] Stoff ist Kraft ≈ being is energy. [2] Wesen ist Werden ≈ being is becoming. [3] Sein ist Sosein ≈ being is qualit[ativit]y. [4] Ansichsein ist Fürsichsein ≈ being is mind. [1]–[3] are plausible metaphysical principles and unprejudiced consideration of what we know about concrete reality obliges us to favor [4], i.e. panpsychism or panexperientialism, above all other positive substantive proposals. For [i] panpsychism is the most ontologically parsimonious vi…Read more
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1308The Bounds of freedomIn Robert Kane (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, Oxford University Press. pp. 441-460. 2001.The shortest form of the Basic Argument against free will and moral responsibility runs as follows: [1] When you act, you do what you do—in the situation in which you find yourself—because of the way you are. [2] If you do what you do because of the way you are, then in order to be fully and ultimately responsible for what you do you must be fully and ultimately responsible for the way you are. But [3] You cannot be fully and ultimately responsible for the way you are. So [4] You cannot be fully…Read more
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65HumeanismJournal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1): 96--102. 2015.ABSTRACT ABSTRACT: In metaphysics, the adjective âHumeanâ is used to describe positions that deny the existence of any necessary connection or causal influence in concrete reality. This usage has been significantly reinforced by David Lewis’s employment of âHumeanâ in the phrase âHumean supervenienceâ. It is, however, not at all clear that this usage is appropriate. Lewis himself raised a doubt about it.
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72Radical self-awarenessIn Mark Siderits, Evan Thompson & Dan Zahavi (eds.), Self, No Self?: Perspectives From Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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156We Live Beyond Any Tale That We Happen to EnactThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 18 (1): 73-90. 2012.
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33Reale intentionalität V.2: Warum impliziert intentionalität bewusstsein?Synthesis Philosophica 20 (2): 279-297. 2005.Intentionalität ist ein essenziell mentales, essenziell ereignishaftes und essenziell auf Erfahrung beruhendes Phänomen. Jeder Versuch, der die Intentionalität charakterisieren will und sie von der bewussten Erfahrung entkoppelt, sieht sich zwei unüberwindbaren Problemen gegenübergestellt. Erstens muss man einräumen, dass beinahe alles Intentionalität besitzt – bis hin zu den subatomaren Partikeln. Zweitens hat dies zur Folge, dass alles, was Intentionalität besitzt, viel zuviel davon besitzt – …Read more
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258The self and the SESMETJournal of Consciousness Studies 6 (4): 99-135. 2002.Response to commentaries on keynote article
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9Episodische EthikDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 56 (5): 651-675. 2008.Der Beitrag unterscheidet zwischen episodischen und diachronischen Persönlichkeiten. Episodische Persönlichkeiten leben emotional stark in der Gegenwart und verfügen im Gegensatz zu diachronischen Persönlichkeiten nicht über ein Narrativ, welches sie ihre Gegenwart und Vergangenheit als eine Einheit empfinden lässt. Der Autor führt vor, dass episodische Persönlichkeiten trotz ihres psychologisch nur schwach ausgeprägten Verhältnisses zu ihrer eigenen Vergangenheit moralfähig sind
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51Against 'Corporism': The Two Uses of 'I'Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 16 (4): 428-448. 2009.In his book Individuals P. F. Strawson writes that ‘both the Cartesian and the no-ownership theorists are profoundly wrong in holding, as each must, that there are two uses of ‘I’, in one of which it denotes something which it does not denote in the other’ . I think, by contrast, that there is a defensible ‘Cartesian materialist’ sense, which Strawson need not reject, in which I can and does denote two different things, and which is nothing like the flawed Wittgensteinian distinction between the…Read more
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63Intentionnalité réelle 2 : Pourquoi l'intentionnalité entraîne la conscience?Synthesis Philosophica 20 (2): 279-297. 2005.L’intentionnalité est un phénomène essentiellement mental, essentiellement événementiel et essentiellement expérienciel . Toute tentative de caractérisation de l’intentionnalité qui la sépare de l’expérience consciente est confrontée à deux problèmes insurmontables. D’abord elle est obligée de reconnaître que presque tout – y compris même les particules subatomiques – est doté d’intentionnalité. En conséquence de quoi, tout ce qui est doté d’intentionnalité en est beaucoup trop – peut-être infin…Read more
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233Selves: an essay in revisionary metaphysicsOxford University Press. 2009.What is the self? Does it exist? If it does exist, what is it like? It's not clear that we even know what we're asking about when we ask these large, metaphysical questions. The idea of the self comes very naturally to us, and it seems rather important, but it's also extremely puzzling. As for the word "self"--it's been taken in so many different ways that it seems that you can mean more or less what you like by it and come up with almost any answer. Galen Strawson proposes to approach the (seem…Read more
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369‘Free will’ is the conventional name of a topic that is best discussed without reference to the will. It is a topic in metaphysics and ethics as much as in the philosophy of mind. Its central questions are ‘What is it to act (or choose) freely?’, and ‘What is it to be morally responsible for one’s actions (or choices)?’ These two questions are closely connected, for it seems clear that freedom of action is a necessary condition of moral responsibility, even if it is not sufficient.
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983Realistic Materialist MonismIn S. Hameroff, A. Kaszniak & D. Chalmers (eds.), Towards a Science of Consciousness III, . 1999.Short version of 'Real materialism', given at Tucson III Conference, 1998. (1) physicalism is true (2) the qualitative character of experience is real, as most naively understood ... so (3) the qualitative character of experience (considered specifically as such) is wholly physical. ‘How can consciousness possibly be physical, given what we know about the physical?’ To ask this question is already to have gone wrong. We have no good reason (as Priestley and Russell and others observe) to think …Read more
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75The Subject of ExperienceOxford University Press. 2017.Does the self exist? If so, what is its nature? How long do selves last? Galen Strawson draws on literature and psychology as well as philosophy to discuss various ways we experience having or being a self. He argues that it is legitimate to say that there is such a thing as the self, distinct from the human being.
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386Freedom and BeliefOxford University Press. 1986.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 …Read more
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98The minimal subjectIn Shaun Gallagher (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Self, Oxford University Press. 2011.This article examines the metaphysics and phenomenology of the self or subject of experience. It suggests that the phenomenological description of the minimal subject requires no reference to body, environment, or social relations and argues for a thin conception of subjectivity which equates the subject with the experience itself. Under this principle of minimal conception, the subject does not exist if the person is asleep. It contends that the profound metaphysical question about experience a…Read more
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194Cognitive phenomenology: real lifeIn Tim Bayne & Michelle Montague (eds.), Cognitive phenomenology, Oxford University Press. pp. 285--325. 2011.Cognitive phenomenology starts from something that has been obscured in much recent analytic philosophy: the fact that lived conscious experience isn’t just a matter of sensation or feeling, but is also cognitive in character, through and through. This is obviously true of ordinary human perceptual experience, and cognitive phenomenology is also concerned with something more exclusively cognitive, which we may call propositional meaning-experience: occurrent experience of linguistic representati…Read more
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640On the inevitability of freedom (from the compatibilist point of view)American Philosophical Quarterly 23 (4): 393-400. 1986.This paper argues that ability to do otherwise (in the compatibilist sense) at the moment of initiation of action is a necessary condition of being able to act at all. If the argument is correct, it shows that Harry Frankfurt never provided a genuine counterexample to the 'principles of alternative possibilities' in his 1969 paper ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’. The paper was written without knowledge of Frankfurt's paper.
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43Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral ResponsibilityLexington Books. 2013.Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility is an edited collection of new essays by an internationally recognized line-up of contributors. It is aimed at readers who wish to explore the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications
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Libertarianism, action, and self-determinationIn Timothy O'Connor (ed.), Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will, Oxford University Press. 1995.
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76The Contingent Reality of Natural NecessityAnalysis 51 (4). 1991.Nicholas Everitt's objection to my discussion of the regularity theory of causation is a common one. Ithink it misses the point, but the point it misses is in a way a delicate one, and hard to express, and the general worry he expresses is a natural one. For that reason it is important, and its importance is reflected in the fact that it is very difficult to find a satisfyingly substantive way of stating the difference between regularity theories of causation and non-regularity theories of …Read more
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