Galen Strawson

Galen John Strawson (born 1952) is a British philosopher and literary critic who works primarily on philosophy of mind, metaphysics (including free will, panpsychism, the mind-body problem, and the self), Locke, Hume and Kant. He read Islamic Studies, Social and Political Science, and Moral Sciences at the University of Cambridge (1969-73), and received his BPhil in philosophy (1977) and his DPhil in philosophy (1983) from the University of Oxford.

Strawson taught at the University of Oxford from 1979-2000, first as a Stipendiary Lecturer at University College (1979-80), Exeter College (1980-83), St Hugh’s College (1983-5), New College (1985-6), and St Hilda’s College (1986-7), and then, from 1987 on, as Fellow and Tutor of Jesus College Oxford. He is currently professor of philosophy at the University of Reading and is a regular visitor at the City University of New York Graduate Center Philosophy Program. He has been a consultant editor at The Times Literary Supplement for many years, and a regular book reviewer for The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Financial Times and The Guardian.

Galen Strawson is the son of the celebrated philosopher Peter Frederick Strawson.

Free will

In the free will debate Strawson holds the minority position of hard incompatibilism, which states that free will is impossible whether determinism is true or not. He argues for this position by use of his Basic Argument, which aims to show that no one is ever ultimately morally responsible for their actions, and hence no one has free will.

Books

• Freedom and Belief (1986) [ISBN 0-19-823933-5]
• The Secret Connexion (1989) [ISBN 0-19-824038-4]
• Mental Reality (1995) [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]

Selected Articles

• "Red and 'Red'" (1989),Synthese 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
• "Real Materialism" (2003), in Chomsky and his Critics ed. L. Antony & N. Hornstein (Oxford: Blackwell), pp 49-88
• "Mental ballistics: the involuntariness of spontaneity" (2003) Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society pp 227-56
• "Against narrativity" (2004) Ratio 16 pp 428-52

External links

• Galen Strawson's website
• Galen Strawson at the CUNY Graduate Center
• Galen Strawson at the University of Reading
• Consciousness and its place in nature Imprint Academic
• "Free Will" in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• " 'The self' " (1997)
• "Against narrativity" (2004)

Interview on Free Will

• The buck stops—where? Living without ultimate responsibility