Online research in philosophy

I find myself in agreement with almost all of Galen's paper (Strawson, 2006) -- except, that is, for his three main claims. These I take to be: that he has provided a substantive and useful definition of 'physicalism'; that physicalism entails panpsychism; and that panpsychism is a necessary and viable doctrine. But I find much to applaud in the incidentals Galen brings in to defend these three claims, particularly his eloquent and uncompromising rejection of the idea of brute emergence, as well as his dissatisfaction with standard forms of physicalism. I certainly find his paper far more on target than most of the stuff I read on this topic.

I examine Galen Strawson's recent work on mental action in his paper, 'Mental Ballistics or The Involuntariness of Spontaneity'. I argue that his account of mental action is too restrictive. I offer a means of testing tokens of mental activity types to determine if they are actional. The upshot is that a good deal more mental activity than Strawson admits is actional.