P.F. Strawson’s Individuals contains a condensed version of an ontology of art. According to this ontology, musical and literary compositions are similar to types. They are abstract entities, instantiated in the performances of the piece of music or the copies of the literary work. Musical and literary compositions are “well-entrenched”, Strawson says – we cannot eliminate these abstractions, or perhaps we have no need to do so. Strawson’s ontology of art forms an integral part of what he (...) calls his “descriptive metaphysics”, and his resistance to the elimination of types and type-like entities is one example of his reservations against “revisionary metaphysics”.Nowadays, Strawson’s name is seldom mentioned in connection with the philosophy of art. Yet the general view of the ontology of art advocated in Individuals is still probably the one most widely held in analytical aesthetics today. Thus, for example, Stephen Davies adopts the same general position as Strawson in his article “Ontology of Art” , the best informed contemporary overview of the complex of problems surrounding the mode of existence of works of art. Unlike Strawson, Davies also adduces explicit reasons why concepts of musical and literary compositions cannot be successfully eliminated.Critically reviewing Strawson’s and Davies’ standpoints and arguments, I maintain that concepts of artworks can in fact be successfully eliminated, and that the bracketing of such notions leads to a better theoretical perspective on musical and literary communication. Throughout the paper, I speak for an open-minded approach to conceptual revision. (shrink)

Peter Strawson makes a crucial distinction between reactive attitudes and the objective attitude. Reactive attitudes such as gratefulness, anger and indignation imply that we take each other seriously as responsible agents. The objective attitude implies that we stop taking each other seriously. Strawson argues that the objective attitude is not merely psychologically difficult: it is inconceivable that we would systematically refrain from taking each other seriously and stop discussing with each other or blaming ourselves or others. Strawson, (...) however, only discusses the reactive attitudes from a general point of view. In this paper, we argue that the reactive attitudes of remorse and moral indignation are forms of ”symbolic restoration’. Retributive punishment should also be interpreted from this perspective. Consequently, our concern with moral blame cannot be understood independently from a concern with the harm that has occurred. Our attitude to the outcome determines our attitude to the agent. The concern with the mental state is secondary: it is structured by its place within the practice of symbolic restoration. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a view about machine autonomy grounded in the theoretical frameworks of 4E cognition and PF Strawson’s reactive attitudes. I begin with critical discussion of White, and conclude that his view is strongly committed to functionalism as it has developed in mainstream analytic philosophy since the 1950s. After suggesting that there is good reason to resist this view by appeal to developments in 4E cognition, I propose an alternative view of machine autonomy. Namely, machines count (...) as autonomous when we members of the moral community adopt reactive attitudes in response to their actions. I distinguish this view from White’s and suggest assets and liabilities of this approach. (shrink)

Could the concept of 'evil' apply to AI? Drawing on PF Strawson's framework of reactive attitudes, this paper argues that we can understand evil as involving agents who are neither fully inside nor fully outside our moral practices. It involves agents whose abilities and capacities are enough to make them morally responsible for their actions, but whose behaviour is far enough outside of the norms of our moral practices to be labelled 'evil'. Understood as such, the paper argues that, (...) when it comes to AI and evil, we have more to fear from semi-autonomous, hybrid agents: agents who have enough of a capacity to operate within a minimal form of human practices of participation and responsibility, yet remain partially outside of it, capable of acting from outside the parameters of ordinary interactions in certain circumstances, perhaps sometimes for reasons unknown. (shrink)

Influentially, Pamela Hieronymi has argued that any account of forgiveness must be both articulate and uncompromising. It must articulate the change in judgement that results in the forgiver’s loss of resentment without excusing or justifying the misdeed, and without comprising a commitment to the transgressor=s responsibility, the wrongness of the action, and the transgressed person=s self-worth. Non-articulate accounts of forgiveness, which rely on indirect strategies for reducing resentment (for example, reflecting on the transgressor’s bad childhood) are said to fail to (...) explain forgiveness. I argue that the articulateness condition is not a necessary condition for forgiveness. I respond to numerous objections advanced against non-articulate accounts, including the claim that the resentment-mitigating practices they involve amount to excusing. Appealing to P.F. Strawson=s distinction between objective and participant attitudes, I argue that forgivers can take transgressors to be detrimentally causally shaped by their past while holding him them to be morally responsible. (shrink)

Festschrift honoring P.F. Strawson; includes contributed articles on his contributions in logic and on logic.

This chapter contains section titled: “The Persons”.

Since its publication in 1959, Individuals has become a modern philosophical classic. Bold in scope and ambition, it continues to influence debates in metaphysics, philosophy of logic and language, and epistemology. Peter Strawson's most famous work, it sets out to describe nothing less than the basic subject matter of our thought. It contains Strawson's now famous argument for descriptive metaphysics and his repudiation of revisionary metaphysics, in which reality is something beyond the world of appearances. Throughout, Individuals advances (...) some highly influential and controversial ideas, such as 'non-solipsistic consciousness' and the concept of a person a 'primitive concept'. (shrink)

Jedną z centralnych kwestii dotyczących problemu wolnej woli stanowi zagadnienie moralnej odpowiedzialności. Na ogół utrzymuje się, iż ma ono najdalej idące konsekwencje dla życia społecznego oraz prawa. Jak jednak argumentuje Galen Strawson, nie można odpowiadać moralnie za własne działania. Argument przebiega następująco: dana osoba podejmuje decyzję w oparciu o swój charakter, osobowość lub inne czynniki umysłowe. Z drugiej strony, za czynniki te nie można ponosić odpowiedzialności, wydaje się bowiem oczywiste, że są one powodowane innymi czynnikami, takimi jak wychowanie czy (...) geny, za które nie jesteśmy odpowiedzialni. Jedynym wyjściem byłoby bycie causa sui, tj. bycie przyczyną samego siebie. Jednakże zgodnie z rozpowszechnioną opinią nic nie może być causa sui. W takim wypadku odpowiedzialność moralna jest niemożliwa. (shrink)

This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.

By the time of his death in 2006, Sir Peter Strawson was regarded as one of the world's most distinguished philosophers. First published thirty years ago but long since unavailable, _Freedom and Resentment_ collects some of Strawson's most important work and is an ideal introduction to his thinking on such topics as the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology and aesthetics. Beginning with the title essay _Freedom and Resentment_, this invaluable collection is testament to the astonishing range of (...) class='Hi'>Strawson's thought as he discusses free will, ethics and morality, logic, the mind-body problem and aesthetics. The book is perhaps best-known for its three interrelated chapters on perception and the imagination, subjects now at the very forefront of philosophical research. This reissue includes a substantial new foreword by Paul Snowdon and a fascinating intellectual autobiography by Strawson. (shrink)

What is the self? Does it exist? If it does exist, what is it like? It's not clear that we even know what we're asking about when we ask these large, metaphysical questions. The idea of the self comes very naturally to us, and it seems rather important, but it's also extremely puzzling. As for the word "self"--it's been taken in so many different ways that it seems that you can mean more or less what you like by it and (...) come up with almost any answer. Galen Strawson proposes to approach the (seeming) problem of the self by starting from the thing that makes it seem there is a problem in the first place: our experience of the self, our experience of having or being a self, a hidden, inner mental presence or locus of consciousness. He argues that we should consider the phenomenology (experience) of the self before we attempt its metaphysics (its existence and nature). And when we have considered what it's like for human beings (assuming we can generalize about ourselves), we need to consider what it might be like for other possible creatures: what's the very least that might count as experience of oneself as a self? This, he proposes, will give us a good idea of what we ought to be looking for when we go on to ask whether there is such a thing-an idea worth following wherever it leads. It leads Strawson to conclude that selves, inner subjects of experience, do indeed exist. But they bear little resemblance to traditional conceptions of the self. (shrink)

It is widely supposed that David Hume invented and espoused the "regularity" theory of causation, holding that causal relations are nothing but a matter of one type of thing being regularly followed by another. It is also widely supposed that he was not only right about this, but that it was one of his greatest contributions to philosophy. Strawson here argues that the regularity theory of causation is indefensible, and that Hume never adopted it in any case. Strawson (...) maintains that Hume did not claim that causation in the natural world is just a matter of regular succession, that such a dogmatic metaphysical claim about the nature of reality would have been utterly contrary to his fundamental philosophical principles, and that he rightly took it for granted that there was more to causation than regularity of succession, claiming only that regularity of succession was all that we could ever know of causation. (shrink)

Identity metaphysics finds identity or unity where other metaphysical theories find difference or diversity. It denies the fundamentality of ontological distinctions that other theories treat as fundamental. It’s opposed to separatism, which mistakes natural conceptual distinctions for ground-floor ontological differences. It proposes that the distinctions between the concepts substance, object, quality, property, process, state, and event are metaphysically superficial; so too the distinctions between the concepts energy, lawsofnature, force, causation, power, and naturalnecessity. So too the distinction between these two sets (...) of concepts. “Thinking takes apart what is really one”. (shrink)

Dieses Werk beleuchtet aus philosophischer Sicht die neuere Psychoanalyse, die zwischen der klinisch ausgerichteten Kleinianischen Theorie und der extraklinisch orientierten neueren Sauglingsforschung entstanden ist. Dabei zeigt sich ein therapeutisch und wissenschaftlich fruchtbarer Gegensatz zwischen dem klinisch rekonstruierten Unbewussten des Sauglings nach Melanie Klein und dem in direkter Beobachtung untersuchten Unbewussten nach Daniel Stern. Insbesondere fur die psychoanalytische Lehre von der Abwehr zeichnen sich neue Perspektiven ab. Nicht zuletzt wird die Diskussion auch in die Wissenschaftsphilosophie und -geschichte eingeordnet.

In this revised and updated edition of The Secret Connexion, Galen Strawson explores one of the most discussed subjects in all philosophy: David Hume's work on causation. Strawson challenges the standard view of Hume, according to which he thinks that there is no such thing as causal influence, and that there is nothing more to causation than things of one kind regularly following things things of another kind. He argues that Hume does believe in causal influence, but insists (...) that we cannot know its nature. The regularity theory of causation is indefensible, and Hume never adopted it in any case. (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)

In his target paper, John Welwood tells us that we have to beware of 'spiritual bypassing -- using spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep personal, emotional -- unfinished business--, to shore up a shaky sense of self, or to belittle basic needs, feelings, and develop-mental tasks, all in the name of enlightenment'. It's arguable that there is an equal danger of 'narrative bypassing' -- using the idea of one's life as a narrative to 'sidestep personal, emotional --unfinished business--, to shore (...) up a shaky sense of self -- all in the name of' a good life. (shrink)

First published in 1952, professor’s Strawson’s highly influential _Introduction_ _to Logical Theory_ provides a detailed examination of the relationship between the behaviour of words in common language and the behaviour of symbols in a logical system. He seeks to explain both the exact nature of the discipline known as Formal Logic, and also to reveal something of the intricate logical structure of ordinary unformalised discourse.