I argue against two popular claims. The first is a descriptive, empirical thesis about the nature of ordinary human experience: ‘each of us constructs and lives a “narrative” . . . this narrative is us, our identities’ (Oliver Sacks); ‘self is a perpetually rewritten story . . . in the end, we become the autobiographical narratives by which we “tell about” our lives’ (Jerry Bruner); ‘we are all virtuoso novelists. . . . We try to make all of our material (...) cohere into a single good story. And that story is our autobiography. The chief fictional char- acter . . . of that autobiography is one’s self’ (Dan Dennett). The second is a normative, ethical claim: we ought to live our lives narratively, or as a story; a ‘basic condition of making sense of ourselves is that we grasp our lives in a narrative’ and have an understanding of our lives ‘as an unfolding story’ (Charles Taylor). A person ‘creates his identity [only] by forming an autobiographical narrative – a story of his life’, and must be in possession of a full and ‘explicit narrative [of his life] to develop fully as a person’ (Marya Schechtman). (shrink)

Consciousness’, they say, ‘is a mystery’. ‘We have no idea what consciousness is.’ ‘The great intellectual task of our time is to explain the existence of consciousness.’ This paper argues that these claims are false. Using ‘ψ’ to denote consciousness, it argues [1] that we know what ψ is (it’s not a mystery); [2] that the idea that we need to explain the existence of ψ begs the question; [3] that ψ is the only thing in concrete reality that we (...) know for certain to exist; [4] that ψ is the only thing in concrete reality whose qualitative nature we know; [5] that in experiencing ψ we know something of the nature of concrete reality as it is in itself; [6] that there is no other case in which we know something of the qualitative nature of concrete reality as it is in itself. It argues further [7] that [1]???[6] are fully compatible with physicalism in the original Vienna-Circle sense of the term; [8] that physicalism is compatible with panpsychism; and [9] that panpsychist physicalism is the most plausible (or if you prefer least implausible) view of the nature of concrete reality. (shrink)

Suppose that X and Y can’t possibly exist apart in reality; then—by definition—there’s no real distinction between them, only a conceptual distinction. There’s a conceptual distinction between a rectilinear figure’s triangularity and its trilaterality, for example, but no real distinction. In fundamental metaphysics there is no real distinction between an object’s categorical properties and its dispositional properties. So too there is no real distinction between an object and its properties. And in fundamental metaphysics, for X and Y to be such (...) that there is no real distinction between them is for them to be identical. (shrink)

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 view, given that the existence of (...) conscious experience is certain and that panpsychism doesn’t posit the existence of any kind of stuff other than conscious experience. [ii] A question also arises about why metaphysicians have posited the existence of something for which there is zero evidence: non-experiential concrete reality. The question is the more pressing because of the silence of physics: physics with its numbers and equations is perfectly silent on the question of the intrinsic non-structural nature of reality. (shrink)

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 and ultimately responsible for what you do. This paper restates the Basic Argument and varies it in several different ways. (shrink)

(1) Materialists hold that every real, concrete phenomenon in the universe is a wholly physical phenomenon. (2) Consciousness ('what-it's-likeness', etc.) is the most certainly existing real, concrete phenomenon there is. It follows that (3) all serious materialists must grant that consciousness is a wholly physical phenomenon. ‘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, Eddington, Russell and others observe) (...) to think that we know anything about the physical that gives us any reason to find any problem in the idea that consciousness is wholly physical. (shrink)

The concept of alienation has been used to capture a specific kind of social ill or malady, and one that philosophers have argued is distinctive of life in modern society. I argue that there is a properly epistemic form of alienation present in modern society that arises due to a conflict between the dynamics of group knowledge and traditional requirements on the intellectual virtue of individuals. As group-based knowledge becomes increasingly widespread in modern society, the conflict with virtue becomes more (...) pervasive, and the virtuous become alienated from fundamental epistemic goods. The aim of this paper is to examine this conflict and to highlight that the ‘social turn’ in epistemology is not free from costs. (shrink)

This chapter makes a number of arguments. Direct realism is true, when properly understood. The issue of its truth or falsity must be kept separate from the issue of scepticism regarding an external world. No defensible version of direct realism denies the existence of things that can be rightly called ‘mental representations’. Direct realism neither requires nor entails ‘disjunctivism’, and ‘disjunctivism’ neither requires nor entails direct realism. Direct realism doesn’t require the truth of ‘transparentism’. There is some truth in transparentism, (...) but we need to distinguish Moore’s version from the Reid-James version. A defensible version of transparentism must acknowledge, firstly, the sense in which we are fully aware of our sensations in conscious perceptual experience, and, secondly, the fact that we are in everyday life often aware of our experiences considered specifically as such. (shrink)

Many think John Locke’s account of personal identity is inconsistent and circular. It’s neither of these things. The root causes of the misreading are [i] the mistake of thinking that Locke uses ‘consciousness’ to mean memory, [ii] failure to appreciate the importance of the ‘concernment’ that always accompanies ‘consciousness’ on Locke’s view, [iii] the tendency to take the term person, in Locke’s text, as if it were (only) some kind of fundamental sortal term like ‘chair’ or ‘human being’, and to (...) fail to take proper account of Locke’s use of it as a ‘forensic’ term (§26). Locke is not interested in the standard question concerning personal identity (i.e. ‘what has to be the case for it to be true that person P1 at (time) t1 is the same as person P2 at (time) t2, the same persisting subject of experience?’). He is interested in other questions all of which he answers: [A] what does a subject of experience that qualifies as a person actually consist of, ontologically speaking, considered at any given time? [B] what mental capacities must a subject of experience have in order to qualify as a person? [C] what sorts of changes of substantial composition can a subject of experience that qualifies as a person undergo while continuing to exist? [D] which actions is a subject of experience who qualifies as a person responsible for? (shrink)

Volume 27, Issue 3, May 2019, Page 652-654.

Many students struggle to enter moral debates in a productive way because they automatically think of moral claims as ‘just opinions’ and not something one could productively argue about. Underlying this response are various versions of a muddled distinction between ‘facts’ and ‘opinions.’ This paper outlines a way to help students overcome their use of this distinction, thereby clearing an obstacle to true moral debate. It explains why the fact-opinion distinction should simply be scrapped, rather than merely sharpened. It then (...) proposes a different distinction well suited to replace it. Finally, it outlines an activity which can be used to teach the new distinction, as well as a number of benefits to attempting the whole replacement process. (shrink)

There is, of course, The Given: what is given in experience. The ‘Myth Of The Given’ is just a wrong answer to the question ‘What is given?’ This paper offers a brief sketch of three possible right answers. It examines an early account by Charles Augustus Strong of why The Myth is a myth. It maintains that a natural and naturalistic version of empiricism is compatible with the fact that the Myth is a myth. It gives proper place to enactivist (...) considerations. It is ) broadly in line with the Sellarsian view as refined by John McDowell. It meets an important constraint: acknowledging the reality of something that seems at first to lend support to The Myth—i.e. the fact that we can engage in ‘non-inferential self-attribution of … sensations’ —without in any way succumbing to the Myth. (shrink)

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 that we (...) know anything about the physical that gives us any reason to find any problem in the idea that consciousness is wholly physical. (shrink)

What does it mean to listen to someone respectfully, that is, insofar as they are due recognition respect? This paper addresses that question and gives the following answer: it is to listen in such a way that you are open to being surprised. A specific interpretation of this openness to surprise is then defended.

In this article I introduce a simple classroom exercise intended to help students better understand Robert Nozick’s famous Wilt Chamberlain thought experiment. I outline the setup and rules of the Basic Version of the Game and explain its primary pedagogical benefits. I then offer several more sophisticated versions of the Game which can help to illustrate the difference between Nozick’s libertarianism and luck egalitarianism.

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.

Most of Spinoza’s arguments for God’s existence do not rely on any special feature of God, but instead on merely general features of substance. This raises the following worry: those arguments prove the existence of non-divine substances just as much as they prove God’s existence, and yet there is not enough room in Spinoza’s system for all these substances. I argue that Spinoza attempts to solve this problem by using a principle of plenitude to rule out the existence of other (...) substances and that the principle cannot be derived from the PSR, as many claim.Abbreviation: PSR: Principle of Sufficient Reason. (shrink)

This paper endorses and expounds the widely held view that all experience involves pre-reflective self-consciousness or self-awareness. It argues that pre-reflective self-consciousness does not involve any sort of experience of ‘me-ness’ or ‘mine-ness’, and that all self-consciousness is essentially relational, essentially has the subject as intentional object, essentially involves representation, in particular self-representation, as well as ‘immediate acquaintance’, in particular immediate self-acquaintance; and cannot in one primordial respect involve a mistake on the part of the subject of who it is.

This paper examines Spinoza’s view on the consistency of mental representation. First, I argue that he departs from Scholastic tradition by arguing that all mental states—whether desires, intentions, beliefs, perceptions, entertainings, etc.—must be logically consistent. Second, I argue that his endorsement of this view is motivated by key Spinozistic doctrines, most importantly the doctrine that all acts of thought represent what could follow from God’s nature. Finally, I argue that Spinoza’s view that all mental representation is consistent pushes him to (...) a linguistic account of contradiction. (shrink)

many things were back to front in 20th century analytic philosophy.

This note sets out the sense in which someone who endorses the Basic Argument (G. Strawson) can be said to be a compatibilist, and stresses the natural compatibilist elements in our thinking about free will.

People attribute resistance to bodies in Spinoza's physics. It's not always clear what they mean when they do this, or whether they are entitled to. This article clarifies what it would mean, and examines the evidence for attributing resistance. The verdict: there's some evidence, but not nearly as much as people think.

Spinoza reasons about impossibilities on a regular basis. But he also says they're unthinkable and that reasoning is a mental process. How can he do this? The paper defends a linguistic account of counterpossible inferences in Spinoza's geometrical method.

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. (shrink)

Replies to commentaries on the book Mental Reality by Noam Chomsky, Michael Smith, Paul Snowdon, Pascal Engel.

Discussion of Robert Kane The Significance of Free Will.

Plato’s partition argument infers that the soul has parts from the fact that the soul experiences mental conflict. Alasdair MacIntyre poses a dilemma for the argument that highlights an ambiguity in the concept of mental conflict. According to the first sense of conflict, a soul is in conflict when it has desires whose satisfaction conditions are logically incompatible. According to the second sense of conflict, a soul is in conflict when it has desires which are logically incompatible even when they (...) are unsatisfied. The dilemma is therefore this: if the mental conflict is supposed to be the latter kind of conflict, then the partition argument is valid but is likely unsound; if it’s supposed to be the former kind, then the partition argument has true premises but is invalid. We explain this dilemma in detail and defend a dispositionalist solution to it. (shrink)

This book is a festschrift (a celebratory collection of writings) honoring Dr. David C. K. Curry, edited by his three children and presented to him upon his retirement in the summer of 2025. The festschrift includes autobiographical reflections from Dr. Curry’s students, colleagues, friends, and family; scholarly essays on evil, pedagogy, and the historiography of philosophy; a pastiche of Miguel de Cervantes; and several instances of what can only be described as “original multimedia content.”.

This article explores Galen's analysis of and response to the Rationalist and Empiricist medical sects. It argues that his interest in their debate concerning the epistemology of medicine and anatomy was key to his advancement of an experimental methodology.

It can be said that both Plato's tripartite soul and Hippocrates' theory of temperament were influential in Galen's perception of ethics. In this respect, Galen, who presents a kind of composition of the effective philosophical and medical traditions of his day, is outside the tradition with his understanding of physicalist psychology. Considering the capacities of the soul as depending on the temperament of the body, Galen generally displays a deterministic attitude towards ethics, that is, the development of (...) the soul. This is because the natural and physical structure is difficult to change. On the other hand, Galen, whom we can call both a physician and a "philosophical therapist", argues that character traits (ethos) can be changed "to the extent that nature allows" through education and habituation at an early age. This article will try to determine and evaluate the possibility Galen ascribes to ethical change and development in humans in the context of character traits. (shrink)

The crux of this paper is to provide a concentrated critical evaluation of Galen Strawson's innovative approach to the self. To that end, I will first attempt to concisely introduce his general thesis, which seems appropriate to be broken up into two major pieces: the phenomenology (experience) of the self, what the self would have to be; and the metaphysics of the self (i.e., a query refers to its metaphysics [its existence and nature]: whether there is any). Explaining and (...) discussing Strawson's twofold account of the self is my first target in this paper. And it is with these two parts that I take issues. Accordingly, I shall determinedly try to develop a counterargument according to which Strawson's establishment of his entire enterprise of the self is based merely on unjustified intuitive generalisation. Next, I will put more effort into making some more argumentative points, mainly to show how his metaphysics does not give much thought to some vital matters of the self in comparison with the systems of metaphysics of his forebears of Western philosophers. What all this means is that Strawsonian metaphysical analysis of the self so conceived and so described appears philosophically to drive itself to justly be placed in an ahistorical context. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Galen’s Institutio Logica is the only introduction to logic in Greek that has survived from antiquity. In it we find a theory that bears some resemblance to propositional logic. The theory is commonly understood as being essentially Stoic. However, this understanding of the text leaves us with a large number of inconsistencies and oddities. In this paper I offer an comprehensive alternative interpretation of the theory. I suggest that it is Peripatetic at base, and has drawn on Stoic (...) elements, but adapted them to an overall decidedly non-Stoic conception of logic and language, a conception indebted to Aristotelian logic in many respects. This interpretation makes it possible to reduce the seeming inconsistencies dramatically. The Peripatetic theory on which Galen draws was possibly developed in the first century BCE. Importantly, it differs from Stoic logic in that it shuns the latter’s syntactic approach, and considers certain linguistic assumptions and language conventions as part of the logical theory itself. My reconstruction of the theory results in a logic of propositions which differs wildly both from Stoic logic and from the ‘classical’ propositional logic of the 20th century. Interestingly, though, the theory in Galen shows that the ancients grappled with a number of logico-linguistic problems that over the last two decades have again become a matter of debate among contemporary logicians and linguists. (shrink)

This article outlines in details specific experiments that Galen performed. It explores how his methodology for experimentation was a sophisticated response to the rationalist-empirist debate as it occurred in ancient medicine.

Galen Strawson's recent work in the Journal of Consciousness Studies correctly identifies that consciousness is certain, that we know it directly, and that demanding explanation of consciousness begs the question. However, Strawson's conclusion that these insights support panpsychist physicalism about "concrete reality as it is in itself" commits the externalist error his opening moves should exclude. This paper demonstrates that applying burden of proof consistently to Strawson's claims about mind-independent reality yields Experiential Empiricism, which is simply Strawson's opening insight (...) without the unjustified ontological additions. The analysis is constrained to Strawson's publicly accessible abstract, as the full paper is paywalled. This constraint itself illuminates a broader pattern: the Journal of Consciousness Studies rejected consciousness-centered epistemology from an unknown author as "too much philosophy" while publishing an established author's consciousness-centered argument that retains externalist commitments. This pattern reveals how academic institutions process partial moves from established figures while excluding complete arguments from outsiders, enabling later absorption of corrections without attribution. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This paper traces the evidence in Galen's Introduction to Logic (Institutio Logica) for a hypothetical syllogistic which predates Stoic propositional logic. It emerges that Galen is one of our main witnesses for such a theory, whose authors are most likely Theophrastus and Eudemus. A reconstruction of this theory is offered which - among other things - allows to solve some apparent textual difficulties in the Institutio Logica.

Thirty years after the rise of the evidence-based medicine (EBM) movement, formal training in philosophy remains poorly represented among medical students and their educators. In this paper, I argue that EBM’s reception in this context has resulted in a privileging of empiricism over rationalism in clinical reasoning with unintended consequences for medical practice. After a limited review of the history of medical epistemology, I argue that a solution to this problem can be found in the method of the 2nd-century Roman (...) physician Galen, who brought empiricism and rationalism together in a synthesis anticipating the scientific method. Next, I review several of the problems that have been identified as resulting from a staunch commitment to empiricism in medical practice. Finally, I conclude that greater epistemological awareness in the medical community would precipitate a Galenic shift toward a more epistemically balanced, scientific approach to clinical research. (shrink)

One of the topics in the philosophy of mind is the discussion of "I", which philosophers have referred to in various interpretations as "The self", "personal identity", "ego", "soul" and "spirit". Philosophers' different theories about the existence and even the nature of this seemingly simple and obvious have turned it into a philosophical problem. Galen Strawson is a physicalist who has addressed this issue by interpreting “The self”. On the one hand, he believes in the existence of the "empirical (...) self", but on the other hand, he denies such qualities as Long-term persistence, personality, and agency, which seem to be essential to the meaning of the "I". The present paper tries to address, by an analythical-critical method, the question of how Strawson believed in the existence of the "I" despite the non-acceptance of these three characteristics. In this regard, first Strawson's view on the nature and existence of the "I" is analyzed, and after evaluating his view, it is concluded that the elimination of these three characteristics is due to weaknesses such as adopting a physicalist basis, a phenomenological method, and a purely mental view of the "I", confusion of the two positions of Truth and proof and his weakness in explaining the nature of unity over time. (shrink)

In early medicine, Galenic physicians considered digestion to be central to health and therapy. It was essential not only for keeping the body in balance but also for absorbing internal drugs effectively. While food digestion aimed to assimilate nutriment into the body, drug absorption aimed to alter the body’s constitution to restore it to a balanced state. Both processes revealed the transformation of substances in the digestive tract, their material composition in elements and particles, as well as their relationship with (...) blood and humours. In the Renaissance, physicians expanded on food digestion and drug absorption according to Galen’s medical treatises, whose printed editions were available in Greek and Latin. In this chapter, I examine the account of the French physician Jean Fernel (1497–1558) in the Universa medicina (1567), through dedicated books to physiology and therapy. These works provided a didactic account of digestion, where Fernel explained the processing of food and drugs in the stomach, liver, and veins, as well as the sensory properties and active powers related to their matter and substance. In so doing, he shed light on ancient and medieval pre-conceptions of food and drug metabolism, as well as their reception in the late Renaissance. (shrink)

The 20th century was full of epoch-making events that left their mark on it. From the outbreak of the First World War and the fall of The German Empire, through numerous political and social shake-ups, until the outbreak of the Second World War, that became the event without precedent in the history of mankind. The First World War meant in many cases not only the end of some form of rule – the monarchy, but also, and maybe first of all, (...) it originated the increase of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. The post-war years were identified with economic problems on a large scale that had influence on every aspect of life. Revolutions and an attempt to create the first democratic country in the history of Germany influenced the outlook of the world and beliefs of all people that lived at that time. The German people were under the influence of ideas and ideals of the educated social class, but also of Catholic child rearing or Protestant values. In that social and political situation wrote Clemens Graf von Galen in 1932 the treatise on Die Pest des Laizismus und ihre Erscheinungsformen, in which he carried out a critical analysis of all occurrences of social, political, religious-morals and economical life that took place in the falling Weimar Republic. Not in a direct way he also took a stand on growing in strength of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The under mentioned article is aimed at presenting a profile of Clemens August Graf von Galen, later the Bishop of Münster, cardinal and the Blessed of the Roman Catholic Church, the origins of his beliefs that were reflected in his treatise Die Pest des Laizismus und ihre Erscheinungsformen. (shrink)

El debate sobre la identidad personal en la filosofía analítica tuvo un importante punto de inflexión en los años ochenta. Tras varias décadas dominadas por lo que podemos denominar el planteamiento objetivo –entre cuyos exponentes destacaremos a Williams (1957), Shoemaker (1970), Perry (1972), Lewis (1976) y Parfit (1984)–, el debate llegó a un punto en el que sus términos se consideraron estériles. Especialmente tras la publicación de Razones y personas de Parfit en 1984. La contundente argumentación de Parfit mostró que (...) si adoptamos una postura reduccionista entonces debemos elegir entre dos opciones. O bien (1) la identidad personal es una relación indeterminada, por lo que la pregunta por nuestra supervivencia puede no tener respuesta en determinados casos, o en su defecto (2) la identidad personal depende de una decisión arbitraria o basada en algún hecho trivial. En cualquiera de los dos casos la conclusión que extrae es que la identidad personal no es lo que realmente nos importa cuando nos preocupamos por nuestra supervivencia (vid. Parfit, 1984, pp. 371–603). La mayor parte de los filósofos, a pesar de ser incapaces de refutar la argumentación de Parfit sin tener que cuestionar también el propio planteamiento objetivo del problema, consideraron sus conclusiones inaceptables, por lo que se hizo necesario buscar un nuevo enfoque que resultase más productivo: las teorías de la identidad narrativa. (shrink)

Thesis on metaphysics featuring Galen Strawson and Noam Chomsky. I discuss Strawsons' Materialism, panpsychism and the topic of reference. I compare Strawson's view with Chomsky's in relation to panpsychism, the nature of reference and the limits of human understanding by reviewing important historical events in the history of philosophy. I also cover some aspects of neuroscience to see if empirical evidence in any way contradicts the claims made by Strawson and Chomsky. I conclude by recasting the questions of metaphysics (...) under an epistemological framework. (shrink)