PEL Presents Closereads: Galen Strawson on Panpsychism (Part One)
episode
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
56 min
2 speakers
4 chapters
transcribed 15 hours ago
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What is the central thesis of Strawson’s “Realistic Monism” paper?
This is Close Reads, a philosophy podcast with Mark and Wes. I'm Wes Allwan, and I'm Mark Winsemeyer. We are once again starting a new reading. And I had picked one I'm I'm gonna be teaching a philosophy of mind class in the fall. People can sign up for that. Partially examine life.com slash class. And I'm trying to get back in the mode so some of the next Partial exam in life activity is gonna be on philosophy of mind stuff. And I was definitely interested in panpsychism. I know you were too West, so I had found this paper I think just searching like often cited philosophy of mind papers by Galen Strawson, another we just did one by him on narrativity called Realistic Monism. Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism from two thousand eight?
What are your preconceptions, Wes, about panpsychism?
Well You know, it's it's one of the I think I don't know if the word is plausible but logical. possible solutions to the problem of consciousness, to the mind, body. Problem. If we I have trouble. saying how something physical can give rise to subjectivity to something that seems to be non physical. Then perhaps if we pause it. That Consciousness is Right, a property of matter, maybe, is the way to put it. I don't know how I'm trying to think of how Philip Goff puts this. People can go look at his videos and read his books. Um, he seems to be the leading proponent of panpsychism today. But I I think the idea is that consciousness is a property. So physics tells us what say atoms and quarks do, but if we wanted to say what they are, this is Goff's analysis, we would have to s say something about consciousness.
All right, so I think we were hoping to I know he's been on a number of podcasts. Maybe we'll ask him to be on with us or read some of his stuff in The fall, perhaps? Uh so to kind of warm us up here, let's just yeah, so the first section is called Physicalism. Um as always the link to the paper will be on the blog post associated with this or if you're watching it on YouTube in the description. Although YouTube does not allow actual hyperlinks, so you have to copy the whole thing and put it in the top of the video. Just Google. You can just
Google. Yes,
realistic monism, why physicalism entails panpsychism. People should uh I uh I know that our our public feed, uh audio feed was being relocated or perhaps discontinued. All the episodes will forever be at patreon dot com slash close reads philosophy and the f the ones that are free wherever you're listening to this are also free there. And in fact, there the audio is ad free there. So that's maybe a reason to go there. But of course we hope you will give us a few dollars and support us there. Assuming that the Apple Podcasts public feed is still operational in some form or another, we would love you to leave us a nice rating or review there if you feel that you want to spread the word about this podcast.
All right, go ahead West, please. Section one Physicalism I take physicalism to be the view that every real concrete phenomena in the universe is dot dot dot physical. Wait for it physical. It is a view about the actual universe, and I am going to assume that it is true. For the purposes of this paper, I will equate concrete with spatio temporally or at least temporally located. And I will use phenomenon as a completely general word word for any sort of existent. Plainly, all mental goings on are concrete phenomena. Alright, let's And there are footnotes. Phenomenon for any existent, but atoms aren't phenomena.
Yeah, phenomena seems to be involved being A phenomena phenomenon for someone, yes, an appearance. So this this is a weird I think it depends on what tradition you're talking in. If you say the c the cosmic phenomena, if you're talking about astronomy or something like that, I think there is a defensible You know, so it's like entity.
Yeah, but I I don't know that physicists say right. Atoms are models. You know, you have theories and models. I don't think the theories are called phenomena and the phenomena are the experimental data. And uh um the theories or models are are posited, but we would wanna say they posit.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the central thesis of Strawson’s “Realistic Monism” paper?
0:01–14:01
2
How do the hosts define physicalism and why is it important for the discussion?
14:01–28:02
3
Why do Strawson and the hosts claim that all mental events are concrete phenomena?
28:02–43:33
4
What is the “mind‑body problem” according to the conversation and how is it framed here?
43:33–56:31
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
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