Book chapter
Cavendish and Strawson on Emergence, Mind, and Self
Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind Volume 3
Oxford University Press
07/07/2023
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198879466.003.0016
Abstract
In a series of provocative papers Galen Strawson defends the view that mental states never emerge or arise from the behavior and interaction of bodies that exhibit no trace of mentality themselves. Strawson then leverages the view in support of panpsychism. Macroscopic bodies like the human brain do possess mental states, and so the matter of which they are composed must not be entirely absent of mentality. At the very least it must contain a kind of proto-mentality, and on the assumption that the matter that resides at the most elemental level of the human brain is not entirely dissimilar to the matter that composes the rest of the universe, mentality—or at least proto-mentality—abounds. Here I engage a comparative discussion of the materialism of Strawson and the similar view at play in work of the seventeenth-century philosopher Margaret Cavendish. I argue that in many respects Cavendish comes out ahead.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Cavendish and Strawson on Emergence, Mind, and Self
- Creators
- David Cunning
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind Volume 3
- DOI
- 10.1093/oso/9780198879466.003.0016
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press; Oxford
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 07/07/2023
- Academic Unit
- Philosophy
- Record Identifier
- 9984444767002771
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