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cross_type 4.46 — strongly supporting 21 facts
Galen Strawson is a prominent philosopher who has extensively theorized about the nature of consciousness, arguing that it cannot emerge from non-conscious matter {fact:1, fact:2, fact:5}. He advocates for panpsychism as a necessary component of true physicalism {fact:4, fact:8, fact:19} and has authored academic works specifically examining the relationship between consciousness and personal identity [1].
Facts (21)
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Non-physicalist Theories of Consciousness cambridge.org 7 facts
claimThomas Nagel and Galen Strawson argue that consciousness cannot be constituted by the physical due to the epistemic gap or related considerations.
claimGalen Strawson's argument regarding brute emergence supports panpsychism (in its strong version) or panprotopsychism (in its weak version), which are views that fundamental physical entities are conscious or protoconscious.
claimThomas Nagel and Galen Strawson argue that if consciousness emerges from the physical, it must occur through causal production or a dualist psychophysical law, but they reject this possibility by invoking the interaction problem, which posits that such causal relations are unintelligible and impossible.
claimGalen Strawson (2006b) defends and endorses the strong version of the argument from non-emergence.
claimGalen Strawson claims that the emergence of consciousness from the physical is an instance of 'brute emergence,' which he defines as emergence that is unintelligible in principle, even to God, because there is nothing about the physical, if understood as devoid of consciousness, that allows for the emergence of consciousness.
perspectiveGalen Strawson endorses the dual-aspect monism version of panpsychism, which posits that fundamental physical entities are conscious or protoconscious because that is the intrinsic nature of their physical structure.
claimJoseph Levine and Galen Strawson have made considerations similar to David Chalmers regarding the inability of standard scientific methods to fully explain consciousness.
Critique of Panpsychism: Philosophical Coherence and Scientific ... thequran.love 6 facts
claimGalen Strawson argues that the analogy between life and consciousness is flawed because life, when defined in biological terms, is fully explainable by physics and chemistry as complicated order, whereas consciousness is experiential and not captured by structure alone.
perspectiveGalen Strawson argues that consciousness is causally effective because conscious decisions affect human actions, and these effects are executed via the physical aspect of a single psychophysical chain of causation.
perspectiveGalen Strawson argues that true physicalism, defined as a physicalism that does not deny the reality of consciousness, necessitates panpsychism.
claimPhilip Goff and Galen Strawson advocate for a neo-Russellian monist view of consciousness, which is based on Bertrand Russell's insight that physics reveals the structure of matter but not its intrinsic character.
claimGalen Strawson argues that because individual experience is the most certain phenomenon in existence, consciousness must be incorporated into our fundamental ontology.
perspectiveGalen Strawson characterizes the theory that consciousness emerges from non-conscious matter as 'brute emergence' or 'magic,' which he considers an incoherent approach.
Panpsychism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu 3 facts
claimIt is currently unclear whether Galen Strawson can conclusively rule out the panprotopsychist perspective on the nature of consciousness.
claimGalen Strawson argues that a non-panpsychist reduction of consciousness is impossible.
perspectiveGalen Strawson argues that to avoid the emergence of consciousness being a 'brute and inexplicable miracle,' one must assume that human and animal consciousness emerges from more basic forms of consciousness.
Panpsychism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2025 Edition) plato.stanford.edu 2 facts
perspectiveGalen Strawson argues that it is difficult to use conceptually homogeneous concepts to bridge the gap between experiential (conscious) and non-experiential (non-conscious) phenomena, making the emergence of consciousness from non-consciousness difficult to render intelligible.
claimThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that Galen Strawson does not conclusively rule out the panprotopsychist option regarding the nature of consciousness.
Self-Consciousness - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu 1 fact
referenceGalen Strawson analyzed John Locke's views on personal identity, consciousness, and concernment in the 2011 book 'Locke on Personal Identity: Consciousness and Concernment'.
Panpsychism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2015 Edition) plato.stanford.edu 1 fact
perspectiveGalen Strawson suggests that only a revolutionary development in physics would allow consciousness to be discerned and described by science.
Panpsychism - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 1 fact
perspectiveGalen Strawson believes that consciousness "just is" matter, comparing the relationship to how mass is energy.