Online research in philosophy

Strawson's primary claim is that 'physicalism entails panpsychism' (Strawson, 2006). This claim would be surprising if it meant what it seems to mean. But it does not.

The modern causal theory of perception—the theory defended by Grice and Strawson—differs from the classical theory advanced by Descartes and Locke in two ways. First, the modern theory is an exercise in conceptual analysis. Secondly, it is a version of what is sometimes called direct realism. I shall comment on these points in turn.

Strawson famously argues that Kant’s argument for the necessary conditions of experience can only be retained once freed from a priori synthesis. Strawson claims that a purely ‘analytical connexion’ between experience and the object of experience is conceptually inferable from a thoroughly analytic premise concerning the capacity for self-ascription of representations. In this paper, I take issue with the way in which Strawson construes the analyticity of the principle of self-ascription or what Kant calls the principle of transcendental apperception. More particularly, I shall argue that Strawson’s unity argument, viz. his construal of the unity of consciousness, on which the principle of self-ascription depends, suffers from a modal fallacy. Whilst arguing this, I shall suggest that a priori synthesis is required even for analytic unity of consciousness to be possible. [Note: on p. 265n.19 reach should be r-each (subscript), and on p. 269 square symbol should be universal quantifier].

Kant is generally regarded as the greatest modern philosopher. But that analytic philosophers treat him as a central voice in contemporary debates is largely due to Sir Peter Strawson, the most eminent philosopher living in Britain today. In this collection, leading Kant scholars and analytic philosophers, including Strawson himself, for the first time assess his relation to Kant. The essays raise questions about how philosophy should deal with its past, what kind of insights it can achieve, and whether we can have knowledge of an objective reality.