Galen John Strawson (/ˈstrɔːsən/;^[2] born 1952) is a Britishanalytic philosopher and literary critic who works primarily onphilosophy of mind,metaphysics (includingfree will,panpsychism, themind–body problem, and theself),John Locke,David Hume,Immanuel Kant andFriedrich Nietzsche.^[3] He has been a consultant editor atThe Times Literary Supplement for many years, and a regular book reviewer forThe Observer,The Sunday Times,The Independent, theFinancial Times andThe Guardian. He is the son of philosopherP. F. Strawson. He holds achair in the Department of Philosophy at theUniversity of Texas, Austin, and taught for many years before that at theUniversity of Reading,City University of New York, andOxford University.

Strawson, the elder son of Oxford philosopherP. F. Strawson, was educated at theDragon School,Oxford (1959–65), where he won a scholarship toWinchester College (1965–68). He left school at 16, after completing hisA-levels and winning a place atTrinity Hall, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he read Oriental studies (1969–71), social and political science (1971–72), and moral sciences (1972–73) before moving to the University of Oxford, where he received his BPhil in philosophy in 1977 and his DPhil in philosophy in 1983. He also spent a year as anauditeur libre (audit student) at theÉcole Normale Supérieure in Paris and at theUniversité Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne as a French Government Scholar (1977–78).

Strawson taught at the University of Oxford from 1979 to 2000, first as a Stipendiary Lecturer at several different colleges, and then, from 1987 on, asFellow and Tutor ofJesus College, Oxford. In 1993, he was a visiting research fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences, Canberra. He has also taught as a visiting professor atNYU (1997),Rutgers University (2000), theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (2010) and theEcole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris (2012). In 2011 he was an Old Dominion Fellow, Council of the Humanities,Princeton University (2011). In 2000, he moved to theUniversity of Reading as professor of philosophy, and was also distinguished professor of philosophy from 2004 to 2007 at theCity University of New York Graduate Center. In 2012, he joined the faculty at theUniversity of Texas, Austin, as holder of a new chair in philosophy.^[4]

In thefree will debate, Strawson holds that there is a fundamental sense in which free will is impossible, whetherdeterminism is true or not. He argues for this position with what he calls his "basic argument", which aims to show that no-one is ever ultimately morally responsible for their actions, and hence that no one has free will in the sense that usually concerns us. In its simplest form, the basic argument runs thus:

1. You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.
2. To be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain crucial mental respects.
3. But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.
4. So you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do.^[5]

This argument resemblesArthur Schopenhauer's position inOn the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, summarised by E. F. J. Payne as the "law of motivation, which states that a definite course of action inevitably ensues on a given character and motive".^[6]

Strawson has argued that what he calls "realistic physicalism" (or "realistic monism")entails panpsychism.^[7] He writes that "as a real physicalist, then, I hold that the mental/experiential is physical."^[7]: 7 He quotes the physicistArthur Eddington in support of his position as follows: "If we must embed our schedule of indicator readings in some kind of background, at least let us accept the only hint we have received as to the significance of the background—namely that it has a nature capable of manifesting itself as a mental activity.^[7]: 11 The editor of theJournal of Consciousness Studies, Anthony Freeman, has written that panpsychism is regarded by many as either "plain crazy, or else a direct route back to animism and superstition".^[7]: 1 But it has a long tradition in Western thought.^[8]

• Freedom and Belief (1986),ISBN 0-19-823933-5
• The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume (1989),ISBN 0-19-824038-4. Revised edition (2014),ISBN 978-0-19-960584-2
• Mental Reality (1994),ISBN 0-262-19352-3
• The Self? (editor) (2005),ISBN 1-4051-2987-5
• Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism? (2006),ISBN 1-84540-059-3
• Real Materialism and Other Essays (2008),ISBN 978-0-19-926743-9
• Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics (2009),ISBN 978-0-19-825006-7
• The Evident Connexion: Hume on Personal Identity (2011),ISBN 978-0-19-960850-8
• Locke on Personal Identity: Consciousness and Concernment (2011),ISBN 978-0-691-14757-4
• The Subject of Experience (2017),ISBN 978-0198777885
• Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, the Self, etc. (2018) (The New York Review of Books),ISBN 978-1-68137-220-4
  • Korean translation (Forthcoming)
• Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism, 2nd edition, revised and expanded, ed. A. Freeman and G. Horswell, (Exeter: Imprint Academic) (2024),ISBN 978-1788361187
• Stuff, Quality, Structure: The Whole Go (2024) (Oxford University Press),ISBN 978-0-19-890365-9

• "Red and 'Red'" (1989),Synthèse 78, pp. 193–232.
• "The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility" (1994),Philosophical Studies 75, pp. 5–24.
• "'The Self" (1997),Journal of Consciousness Studies 4, pp. 405–28.
• "The bounds of freedom" (2001), inThe Oxford Handbook on Free Will, ed. R. Kane (Oxford University Press), pp. 441–60.
• "Hume on himself" (2001), inEssays in Practical Philosophy: From Action to values, ed. D. Egonsson, J. Josefsson, B. Petersson and T. Rønnow-Rasmussen (Aldershot: Ashgate Press), pp. 69–94.
• "Real Materialism"^{[permanent dead link‍]} (2003), inChomsky and his Critics, ed. L. Antony and N. Hornstein (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 49–88.
• "Mental ballistics: the involuntariness of spontaneity" (2003),Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, pp. 227–56.
• "A Fallacy of our Age" ('Against Narrative') in theTimes Literary Supplement, 15 October 2004
• "Against Narrativity" (2004),Ratio 17, pp. 428–52.
• "Gegen die Narrativität" (2005), revised and expanded version of "Against Narrativity" inDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 53, pp. 3–22.
• "Episodic ethics" (2005) inNarrative and Understanding Person, ed. D. Hutto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 85–115.
• "Why I have no future" (2009)The Philosophers' Magazine, Issue 38
• "Against 'corporism': the two uses of I" (2009)Organon F 16, pp. 428–448.
• "The Self" inThe Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, ed. B. McLaughlin and A. Beckermann (Oxford University Press), pp. 541–64.
• "5 Questions on Mind and Consciousness" (2009), inMind and Consciousness: 5 Questions (AutomaticPress/VIP,) pp. 191–204.
• "5 Questions on Action" (2009), inPhilosophy of Action: 5 Questions (AutomaticPress/VIP), pp. 253–9.
• "On the SESMET theory of subjectivity" (2009), inMind That Abides, ed. D. Skrbina (Amsterdam: John Benjamins), pp. 57–64.
• "The identity of the categorical and the dispositional" (2008),Analysis 68/4, pp. 271–8.
• "Radical Self-Awareness" (2010), inSelf, No Self?:Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions, ed. M. Siderits, E. Thompson, and D. Zahavi (Oxford University Press), pp. 274–307.
• "The depth(s) of the twentieth century" (2010),Analysis 70/4:1.
• "Fundamental Singleness: subjects as objects (how to turn the first two Paralogisms into valid arguments)" (2010), inThe Metaphysics of Consciousness, ed. P. Basile et al.(Cambridge University Press), pp. 61–92.
• "Narrativity and non-Narrativity" (2010), in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 1, pp. 775–80.
• "La impossibilidad de la responsabilidad moral en sentido último" (2010), Spanish Translation of "The Impossibility of (Ultimate) Moral Responsibility", inCuadernos Eticos
• "Cognitive phenomenology: real life" (2011), inCognitive Phenomenology, ed.T. Bayne and M. Montague (Oxford University Press), pp. 285–325.
• "The impossibility of ultimate responsibility?" inFree Will and Modern Science, ed. R. Swinburne (London: British Academy) (December), pp. 126–40.
• "Owning the Past: Reply to Stokes" (2011),Journal of Consciousness Studies 18, pp. 170–95.
• "The minimal self" (2011), inOxford Handbook of the Self, ed. S. Gallagher (Oxford University Press), pp. 253–278.
• "Real naturalism" (2012), inProceedings of the American Philosophical Association 86/2, pp. 125–154.
• "I and I: immunity to error through misidentification of the subject" (2012), inImmunity to Error Through Misidentification: New Essays, ed. S. Prosser and F. Recanati (Cambridge University Press)
• "All My Hopes Vanish: Hume’s Appendix" (2012), inThe Continuum Companion to Hume, ed. A Bailey and D. O’Brien (London: Continuum)
• "We live beyond any tale that we happen to enact" (2012), inHarvard Review of Philosophy 18, pp. 73–90.
• "Contra la Narratividad" (2013), Spanish Translation of "Against Narrativity", inCuadernos de Crîtica 56 (México: Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas)
• Italian Translation of "The Minimal Subject" (2014) inQuel che Resta dell’Io (Roma: Castelvecchi) pp. 41
• "Free will" (2015), inNorton Introduction toPhilosophy, ed. A. Byrne, J. Cohen, G. Rosen and S. Shiffrin (New York:Norton)
• "Real direct realism" (2015), inThe Nature of Phenomenal Qualities, ed. P. Coates and S. Coleman (Oxford University Press)
• "Nietzsche’s metaphysics?" (2015), inNietzsche on Mind and Nature, ed.M. Dries and P. Kail (Oxford University Press)
• "When I enter most intimately into what I call myself" (2015), inOxford Handbook of David Hume ed. Paul Russell (Oxford University Press)
• "The unstoried life" (2015), inOn Life-Writing, ed. Z. Leader (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
• "'The secrets of all hearts': Locke on personal identity" (2015), inMind, Self, and Person, ed. A. O'Hear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
• "Mind and being: the primacy of panpsychism", inPanpsychism: Philosophical Essays, ed. G. Bruntrup and L. Jaskolla (New York: Oxford University Press)
• "The concept of consciousness in the twentieth century" (2016), inConsciousness, ed. A. Simmons (New York: Oxford University Press)
• "Narrative bypassing", inA New Approach to Studies of the Self, ed. N. Praetorius,Journal of Consciousness Studies 16, pp. 125–139
• "Conceivability and the silence of physics" (2017),Journal of Consciousness Studies
• "Descartes's mind" (2017), inDescartes and Cartesianism: Essays in Honour of Desmond Clarke, ed. S. Gaukroger and C. Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
• "Consciousness never left" (2017), inThe Return of Consciousness, ed. K. Almqvist and A. Haag (Stockholm: Axel and Margaret Axson Johnson Foundation)
• "Physicalist panpsychism" (2017), inThe Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, 2nd ed, ed. S. Schneider and M. Velmans (New York: Wiley-Blackwell)
• "Contre la narrativité" (2017), French Translation of "Against Narrativity", inFabula-LHT
• "What does 'physical' mean? A prolegomenon to physicalist panpsychism", inRoutledge Handbook of Panpsychism
• "Descartes and the Buddha—arapprochement?" inReasons and Empty Persons: Mind, Metaphysics, and Morality: Essays in Honor of Mark Siderits, ed. C. Coseru (Springer, 2023) pp. 63-86
• "Blockers and laughter: panpsychism, archepsychism, pantachepsychism" (2024), in second revised and expanded edition ofConsciousness and its Place in Nature, ed. A Freeman (Exeter: Imprint Academic)
• "The Impossibility of Subjectless Experience" (2024), inJournal of Consciousness Studies vol. 31, pp. 26–36

• Epiphenomenalism
• Free will
• Immanuel Kant
• Neuroscience of free will
• Philosophical zombie

• Feinberg, Joel;Shafer-Landau, Russ:Reason & Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy: Thirteenth Edition (Thomson Wadsworth, 2008).

• Galen Strawson at the University of Texas at Austin
• Galen Strawson at the University of Reading
• "Free Will" an entry by Strawson in theRoutledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• "I am not a story"Archived 5 September 2015 at theWayback Machine an article by Strawson in Aeon magazine
• "You Cannot Make Yourself the Way You Are" – Strawson interviewed by Tamler Sommers,The Believer, March 2003 (Also published under the title"The Buck Stops – Where? Living Without Ultimate Moral Responsibility" at Naturalism.org).
• Good and Evil, 1 April 1999, BBC Radio programIn Our Time
• Virtue, 28 February 2002, BBC Radio programIn Our Time
• Free Will, 10 March 2011, BBC Radio programIn Our Time
• Evil, 5 August 2015, BBC Radio ProgramMoral Maze
• "Things That Bother Me by Galen Strawson – a case for mistaken identity", review ofThings that Bother Me by Jonathan Derbyshire in the Financial Times, 13 April 2018
• "Brimming with X", book review of Michael Pollan'sHow to Change Your Mind: The new science of psychedelics, in theTimes Literary Supplement, August 8, 2018
• "Galileo’s Error by Philip Goff review – a new science of consciousness", book review of Philip Goff'sGalileo’s Error, inThe Guardian, 27 December 2019
• "Why? The Purpose of the Universe by Philip Goff review – a real poser", book review of Philip Goff'sWhy? The Purpose of the Universe inThe Guardian, 28 December 2023

• 1952 births
• Living people
• 20th-century British philosophers
• 21st-century British philosophers
• Academics of the University of Reading
• Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
• Analytic philosophers
• British atheists
• Fellows of Jesus College, Oxford
• Panpsychism
• Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University alumni
• People educated at Winchester College
• Philosophers of identity
• Strawson family
• University of Texas at Austin faculty

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