Avishai Margalit formerly of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, has written a book on THE ETHICS OF MEMORY. The very title evokes a number of thoughts. We are often told that we have an obligation to remember this or that. "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot ...Camelot...." and other such sentiments. But is that really meant literally? is it even coherent as literally understood? Galen Strawson has reviewed Margalit's book, here: https://www.academia.edu/28409721/review_of_Avishai_Margalit_The_Ethics_of_Memory_Strawson.pdf Strawson thinks it a fine book, but the point he wishes to make is that one of Margalit's points seems to him too selective. Margalit treats it as a near-universal point that humans don't want to be forgotten, they/we want fame that will live on after our death, and this is one reason our friends and family want to help us with that, and thus feel an ethical obligation to our memory. Strawson...
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A recent essay by th e philosopher Galen Strawson has looked at the mind-body problem from a distinctive angle. The title of the essay seems more straightforward than it is. "Consciousness isn't a mystery. It's Matter." One first gets the impression that Strawson is taking a straightforward materialist/eliminativist view: consciousness simply is matter in one of its operations. But that is to presume that the "it" in the second sentence is an unambiguous reference to the word "consciousness" in the first sentence. Another reading suggests itself, though. The "it" could refer to the word "mystery." The second sentence would then mean, "It's matter that is the real mystery." Both meanings fall within the scope of Strawson's intention. It is what Strawson calls a Very Large Mistake to think that we know enough about matter, through the science of physics, to know that consciousness can't be a materi...
On December18th I posted here a discussion of Galen Strawson's 2011 book, THE EVIDENT CONNEXION: HUME ON PERSONAL IDENTITY. I promised then that I would come back to the subject. The very short version is this. Hume understands personal identity to depend on the mind. It can't depend on the brain, or the body generally, because for Hume our knowledge of enduring physical objects is quite limited -- we know bundles of sensations that act together with regularity. So personal identity depends on the mind, and Humean philosophy needs an active (to some extent an enduring) mind to do the work of generating "fictions" (in some sense) about enduring physical objects and causal relations among them. But when Hume tries to analyze the mind and what we know of it, it too rather crumbles in his hands. He finds that he could make sense of the knowing mind only if he believed either in a soul or in a strong knowable connection of cause and effect. Hume rej...
In the opening days of this year I wrote several posts inspired by Galen Strawson's book about David Hume and the issue of causation. Today, I return to that issue with simply an editorial change. I've sliced those posts together into one, and removed some unnecessary duplication or throat clearing. The result follows: THE SECRET CONNEXION (2014), by Galen Strawson, looks at David Hume's views on causation at great length, and brings in Kant in a fascinating way. Strawson has impressive credentials as a philosopher, but I'll let you look that material up for yourself. What I'll explain here is Strawson's bottom line on causation: HUME AND KANT WERE SAYING THE SAME THING. And what they were saying is a view that Strawson respects, although he doesn't quite seem to adopt it as his own. Through much of the book, Strawson makes a historical point, that Hume is often misunderstood on the issue of causation. He is seen as having denied that there is any s...
I employed the last three blog entries to discuss a book that offers a much-contested interpretation of certain critical passages in the writings of David Hume. The conclusion of it was that Galen Strawson sees a closer relationship amongst Berkeley, Hume, and Kant than many other commenters do. He sees a single message coming from the three of them. I'm going beyond Strawson now, but I'll try to formulate the philosophy of these amigos in a series of propositions. 1. The world we unreflexively think we're living in is real only in a conditional sense, it is less than fully real. 2. Since our intellect and senses are adapted for [or to] this living world, we are definitionally not adapted to comprehension of the fully real world. 3. It is reasonable to expect that in that Really Real world there exists a relationship of cause and effect, though as implied in (2) there is much we cannot know about that. 4. One possibility we might imagine (though we may not ...
My favorite Christmas present this year was one of several from Diane, love of my life. The one I have in mind was a book both of substantive philosophy and of the history of philosophy written by Galen Strawson, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin. The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume (2014). The first edition of the book came out a quarter century ago, this second edition, judging from all the post-1989 references, is the product of a good deal of additional toil. And to answer an obvious question: no, it wasn't Diane's idea to buy this for me, but I am grateful she accepted my prodding in this direction with good grace. Strawson's historical point is that David Hume is often misunderstood on the issue of causation. He is seen as having denied that there is any such thing as Causation (capital "C"), allowing only a sort of lower-case causation. There is, in his opinion as generally understood, no force in the world of event...