Thursday, April 20, 2006

Thank You Galen Strawson

[Updated 16 March 2009: Broken link. Strawson has a new home page here; but the link to his paper below is unfortunately gone. A revised version of the paper with commentary and Strawson's replies are collected in this book (actually a special edition of the Journal of Consciousness Studies.]

Hat tip goes to this post by Justin. Galen Strawson's new paper persuasively makes the straightforward argument:

1. Experience is a fundamental part of the world.
2. Emergence of experience from wholly non-experiential parts is incoherent.
3. From 1 and 2, panexperientialism is entailed.

Better yet, he does this an a very entertaining style -- sort of like your grouchy uncle who has run out of patience with impertinent nonsense (if said uncle was also an excellent philosopher).


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have concluded after long years of study and serious contemplation of what I have learned both from books and the world around me, that the answers to the things which have perplexed mankind throughout his history and today have simple answers if we take the obvious path of commonsense and do not allow ourselves to be sidetracked by issues of little or no importance.

And I have written several essays on REALITY which you may access on my web site http://coldturkey.us

We may have a common interest.

Steve said...

Thanks for stopping by. I will return the favor and take a look.

MikeS said...

Wow, Galen Strawson produces another humdinger, thanks for the link. I think the lad is outshining his illustrious dad. I have a daily ritual whereupon I spitupon the name of Ernest Gellner -I'm sure you can figure out why.