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. He also has five children with the eldest being 31 and the youngest 11. (Emilie, Tom, Georgia, [Harry] and Ivo.) Galen Strawson also loves cricket.

Free will

In the free will debate Strawson holds the minority position of hard incompatibilism. He stresses the point that there is a fundamental sense in which free will is impossible whether determinism is true or not. He argues for this position by use of his Basic Argument. This aims to show that no one is ever ultimately morally responsible for their actions, and hence that no one has free will in the sense that usually concerns us. In its simplest form the Basic Argument runs as follows. (1) You do what you do because of the way you are. So (2) in order to be ultimately responsible for what you do you need to be ultimately responsible for what you are—at least in certain crucial mental respects. But (3) you can’t be ultimately responsible for what you are in any respect at all. So (4) you can’t be ultimately responsible for what you do.

Books

• Freedom and Belief (1986) ISBN 0198239335
• The Secret Connexion (1989) ISBN 0198240384
• Mental Reality (1995) ISBN 0262193523
• The Self? (editor) (2005) ISBN 1405129875
• Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does physicalism entail panpsychism? (2006) ISBN 1845400593
• Real Materialism and Other Essays (2008) ISBN 9780199267439

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