Mental Reality, Second Edition, with a new appendix (Representation and Mind)

401 Pages·2009·1.14 MB·English

by  Galen Strawson

Mental Reality
Galen Strawson
second edition with a new appendix
(cid:115)
Mental Reality
Representation and Mind
Hilary Putnam and Ned Block, Editors
A complete list of the books in the Representation and Mind series
appears at the back of the book.
Mental Reality
second edition
Galen Strawson
with a new appendix
A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 1994, 2010 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by
any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, and
information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the
publisher.
This book was set in Sabon by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong, and
was printed and bound in the United States of America.
First printing, 1994.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Strawson, Galen.
Mental reality / Galen Strawson.—2nd ed., with a new appendix.
p. cm.—(Representation and mind series)
“A Bradford book.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-51310-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Consciousness. 2. Behaviorism (Psychology). 3. Mind and body.
4. Materialism. 5. Philosophy of mind. I. Title.
B808.9.S73 2010
128′.2—dc22
2009011301
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my friend Simon Halliday, 1951–1975

Contents
Preface xi
Preface to the Second Edition xv
Acknowledgment xxi
1 Introduction 1
1.1 A Default Position 1
1.2 Experience 2
1.3 The Character of Experience 3
1.4 Understanding-Experience 5
1.5 A Note about Dispositional Mental States 13
1.6 Purely Experiential Content 14
1.7 An Account of Four Seconds of Thought 18
2 Three Questions 23
2.1 Introduction 23
2.2 The Mental and the Nonmental 23
2.3 The Mental and the Publicly Observable 25
2.4 The Mental and the Behavioral 27
2.5 Neobehaviorism and Reductionism 29
2.6 Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind 33
2.7 Conclusion: The Three Questions 34
3 Agnostic Materialism, Part 1 43
3.1 Introduction 43
3.2 Monism 46
3.3 The Linguistic Argument 48
3.4 Materialism and M&P Monism 55
viii Contents
3.5 A Comment on Reduction 59
3.6 The Impossibility of an “Objective Phenomenology” 62
3.7 Asymmetry and Reduction 66
3.8 Equal-Status Monism 72
3.9 Panpsychism 75
3.10 The Inescapability of Metaphysics 78
4 Agnostic Materialism, Part 2 81
4.1 Ignorance 81
4.2 Sensory Spaces 82
4.3 Experience, Explanation, and Theoretical Integration 84
4.4 The Hard Part of the Mind–Body Problem 93
4.5 Neutral Monism and Agnostic Monism 96
4.6 A Comment on Eliminativism, Instrumentalism, and So
On 99
4.7 Conclusion 104
5 Mentalism, Idealism, and Immaterialism 107
5.1 Introduction 107
5.2 Mentalism 108
5.3 Strict or Pure Process Idealism 111
5.4 Active-Principle Idealism 112
5.5 Stuff Idealism 114
5.6 Immaterialism 117
5.7 The Positions Restated 120
5.8 The Dualist Options 123
5.9 Summary 127
5.10 Frege’s Thesis 129
5.11 Objections to Pure Process Idealism 134
5.12 The Problem of Mental Dispositions 136
6 ‘Mental’ 145
6.1 Introduction 145
6.2 Shared Abilities? 146
6.3 The Sorting Ability 148
6.4 The Defi nition of ‘Mental Being’ 153
6.5 Mental Phenomena 158
6.6 The View That All Mental Phenomena Are Experiential
Phenomena 162
Contents ix
7 Natural Intentionality 177
7.1 Introduction 177
7.2 E/C Intentionality 179
7.3 The Experienceless 186
7.4 Intentionality and Abstract and Nonexistent Objects 189
7.5 Experience, Purely Experiential Content, and N/C
Intentionality 194
7.6 Concepts in Nature 198
7.7 Intentionality and Experience 203
7.8 Summary with Problem 208
7.9 Conclusion 213
8 Pain and ‘Pain’ 215
8.1 Introduction 215
8.2 The Neobehaviorist View 216
8.3 A Linguistic Argument for the Necessary Connection between
Pain and Behavior 219
8.4 A Challenge 222
8.5 The Sirians 226
8.6 N.N.’s Novel 229
8.7 An Objection to the Sirians 235
8.8 The Betelgeuzians 238
8.9 The Point of the Sirians 239
8.10 Functionalism, Naturalism, and Realism about Pain 240
8.11 Unpleasantness and Qualitative Character 247
9 The Weather Watchers 251
9.1 Introduction 251
9.2 The Rooting Story 254
9.3 What Is It Like to Be a Weather Watcher? 255
9.4 The Aptitudes of Mental States 256
9.5 The Argument from the Conditions for Possessing the
Concept of Space 261
9.6 The Argument from the Conditions for Language
Ability 263
9.7 The Argument from the Nature of Desire 264
9.8 Desire and Affect 280
9.9 The Argument from the Phenomenology of Desire 284