Galen Strawson

This is a revised and updated edition of Galen Strawson's groundbreaking first book, where he argues that there is a fundamental sense in which there is no such thing as free will or true moral responsibility (as this is ordinarily understood). This conclusion is very hard to accept. On the whole we continue to believe firmly both that we have free will and that we are truly morally responsible for what we do. Strawson devotes much of the book to an attempt to explain why this is so. He examines various aspects of the 'cognitive phenomenology' of freedom - the nature, causes, and consequences of our deep commitment to belief in freedom. In particular, he considers at length a number of problems that are raised by the suggestion that, if freedom were possible, believing oneself to be a free agent would be a necessary condition of being a free agent.

This book argues for identity metaphysics. It argues, in other words, for categorial monism in metaphysics: the view that there is, so far as concrete reality is concerned, only one truly fundamental metaphysical category: stuff. The use of the word ‘stuff’ is an attempt to escape some of the problematic connotations of more traditional terms like ‘substance’. That said, the meaning of ‘stuff’ may be considered to be close to the meaning of ‘substance’ once ‘substance’ has been completely detached from any ideas of substance as something that ‘bears’ or ‘has’ properties or qualities or ‘underlies’ anything. In more detail: the book argues that in fundamental metaphysics [1] the categories of substance and quality, or object and property, which are traditionally understood to be irreducibly distinct, fuse into a single ontological category. So too [2] the notions of power, force, energy, cause, laws of nature, and natural necessity fuse into a single ontological category. Finally [3] there is a fusion of fusions [1] and [2]. For just as there is no fundamental ontological distinction between the quality being of a thing x and the power being of x, so too there is no fundamental ontological distinction between the quality being of x and its being full stop. The final part of the book argues for the view that if two things x and y are structurally identical, where this means identical under all possible true structural descriptions, then they are stuff identical.

This chapter considers ten claims. There is no [1] persisting and unitary self, [2] no fundamental (ontological) distinction between objects and their properties, or [3] between the categorical properties of things and the dispositional or power properties of things, or [4] between objects or substances and processes and events. [5] Reality isn’t truly divisible into causes and effects. [6] Objects are not governed by laws of nature ontologically distinct from them. [7] There is no free will. [8] Determinism is true. [9] Reality is one. [10] Reality is suffused with—if it does not consist of—mentality in some form. This chapter argues that Nietzsche’s mature position certainly includes [1]–[7]; also [8], properly understood, and probably [9] and [10].

This chapter glosses the terms ‘naturalism’, ‘physicalism’, ‘intentionality’, ‘aboutness’, ‘mental’, ‘content’, ‘mental content’, ‘representational content’, and so on, in ways that may seem unorthodox but should not. It points out that dispositions like belief dispositions cannot — metaphysically cannot — be (mentally) contentful entities. It argues dutifully for the existence of things that obviously exist, not only conscious experience, but also, more specifically, cognitive conscious experience as opposed to sensory experience. The chapter presents the case for saying that (1) the only truly intentional entities are conscious experiential episodes. It argues that although one can (with Humpty Dumpty) use words like ‘mental’ and ‘intentional’ as one likes, there is in the end no tenable ground between (1) and (2) full-blown Dennettian behaviourism/instrumentalism/antirealism about the mind; as Dennett himself agrees. To accept (2), however, is to have completely lost touch with reality.

There occurred in the twentieth century the most remarkable episode in the history of human thought. A number of thinkers denied the existence of something we know with certainty to exist: consciousness, conscious experience. Others held back from the Denial, as we may call it, but claimed that it might be true --a claim no less remarkable than the Denial. This paper documents some aspects of this episode, with particular reference to two things. First, the development of two views which are forms of the Denial --philosophical behaviourism, and functionalism considered as a doctrine in the philosophy of mind-- from a view that does not in any way involve the Denial: psychological methodological behaviourism. Second, the rise of a way of understanding naturalism --materialist or physicalist naturalism-- that wrongly takes naturalism to entail the Denial.

This paper argues that a language can exist and flourish in a community even if none of of the members of the community has any communication intentions; and that reference to the notion of communication intention can therefore be dispensed with in the core account of the nature of linguistic meaning. Certainly one cannot elucidate the notion of linguistic meaning without reference to psychological notions; the communication-intention theorists are right about this. They are, however, wrong about which psychological notions are needed. It is not possession of the ability to mean something that is crucial—the possession and exercise of communication intentions. What is crucial is rather the possession of certain semantic psychological attitudes. To possess such semantic psychological attitudes is to be disposed to take certain publicly observable phenomena—such as sights and sounds—as meaning something. The paper argues that it is possible to describe circumstances in which one can in so doing be said to understand their meaning.

All experience is experiencing, and therefore entails an experiencer — i.e.a subject of experience. This is an a priori truth. It does not entail that, in the case of any given episode of experience, the portion of reality that is correctly said to be the experiencer (the subject of the experience) is something ontically distinct from the portion of reality that is the episode of experience itself, and there is one metaphysically fundamental way of conceiving of the subject of experience — the thin conception — given which the subject of an experience is not ontically distinct from the experience.

This paper considers Hume’s account of personal identity in his Treatise of Human Nature. It argues for three connected claims. Hume does not endorse a “bundle theory” of mind, according to which the mind or self is simply a “bundle” of perceptions; he thinks that “the essence of the mind [is] unknown to us.” Hume does not deny the existence of subjects of experience; he does not endorse a “no self” or “no ownership” view. Hume does not claim that the subject of experience is not encountered in experience. The paper also examines Hume’s phenomenological account of self-experience—of what he comes across when he engages in mental self-examination by “entering intimately into what I call myself”—and his psychological account of how we come to believe in the existence of a persisting self as a result of the mind’s “sliding easily” along certain series of perceptions.

Panpsychism is a plausible theory of the fundamental nature of reality. It is fully compatible with everything in current physics, and with physicalism. It is an error to think that being physical excludes being mental or experiential. Anyone who endorses the following three views – [i] materialism or physicalism is true, [ii], consciousness is real, [iii] there is no ‘radical emergence’ – should at least endorse ‘micropsychism’ or psychism, the view that [iv] mind or consciousness is a fundamental feature of concrete reality, already present in the most basic forms of concrete reality. And given [v] the interconvertibility (fungibility) of all fundamental forms of physical stuff, panpsychism appears to be the most plausible form of psychism.

Identity metaphysics finds identity or unity where other metaphysical theories find difference or diversity. It denies the fundamentality of ontological distinctions that other theories treat as fundamental. It’s opposed to separatism, which mistakes natural conceptual distinctions for ground-floor ontological differences. It proposes that the distinctions between the concepts substance, object, quality, property, process, state, and event are metaphysically superficial; so too the distinctions between the concepts energy, lawsofnature, force, causation, power, and naturalnecessity. So too the distinction between these two sets of concepts. “Thinking takes apart what is really one”.

Should ethically serious people seek for unity in their lives, for harmony, for coherence? Is this a requirement on living a good life, a requirement on flourishing or eudaimonia? Should we aim for some kind of self-authorship or narrative self-constitution, as Marya Schechtman and Dan McAdams have suggested? Many think we should. This chapter argues for the opposite view, assembling and reflecting on a dossier of contrary quotations from many sources, including Proust, Montaigne, Alice Munro, Georges Perec, and Keats.

The debate about mental content is not well framed as internalists versus externalists, because there is both internal and external mental content. There is also a question about how best to draw the line between them, and this paper argues that this line is not usually drawn in the right place. It proposes a new alignment: the expression ‘internal content’ is to be taken to denote actually occurring, concrete, immediately phenomenologically given content. Absolutely everything else that can be said to be the content of experience is to be classified as external content. It turns out, under this new alignment, that internal content can be external content; this is the case when I think about your pain, or indeed my own pain. But this is as it should be.

Jedną z centralnych kwestii dotyczących problemu wolnej woli stanowi zagadnienie moralnej odpowiedzialności. Na ogół utrzymuje się, iż ma ono najdalej idące konsekwencje dla życia społecznego oraz prawa. Jak jednak argumentuje Galen Strawson, nie można odpowiadać moralnie za własne działania. Argument przebiega następująco: dana osoba podejmuje decyzję w oparciu o swój charakter, osobowość lub inne czynniki umysłowe. Z drugiej strony, za czynniki te nie można ponosić odpowiedzialności, wydaje się bowiem oczywiste, że są one powodowane innymi czynnikami, takimi jak wychowanie czy geny, za które nie jesteśmy odpowiedzialni. Jedynym wyjściem byłoby bycie causa sui, tj. bycie przyczyną samego siebie. Jednakże zgodnie z rozpowszechnioną opinią nic nie może być causa sui. W takim wypadku odpowiedzialność moralna jest niemożliwa.

W najogólniejszym sformułowaniu panpsychizm to pogląd, który głosi, że wszystko jest umysłem lub świadomością. Mimo że stanowisko to ma długą tradycję i staje się coraz popularniejsze we współczesnej debacie, wciąż ma ono wielu przeciwników. Celem tego artykułu jest dowiedzenie, że panpsychizm stanowi najlepsze metafizyczne wyjaśnienie natury tego, co stanowi ostateczne tworzywo rzeczywistości. Jest to zarazem odmiana fizykalizmu, zgodnie z którą doświadczenie jest budulcem wszystkich konkretnie istniejących przedmiotów.