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

Strawson's book is noteworthy for its declaration of faith: faith that naturalism-monism-materialism is true. (Naturalism-monism-materialism is the doctrine that there is no supernatural realm and that everything that is real is material or made out of matter. From now on I will refer to this simply as materialism.) Noteworthy because Strawson insists that materialism cannot explain or understand conscious experience as material, but that no sane person denies that conscious experience is real.

All declarations of faith raise the question Why this faith rather than some other? In Strawson's case the pertinent question is Why monism rather than dualism, and, indeed, Why not a supernatural realm as well as a natural one?

With respect to the former question, Strawson is ingenious, though, as he brings out, Locke was there first. The essence of Strawson's ingenuity here is this. Dualism comes under severe pressure to posit an immaterial stuff that the mind is which somehow makes possible thoughts, memories, etc. This immaterial stuff turns out to be such that one does not and cannot know its nature. But this allows that this allegedly immaterial stuff may, for all we know, be material, for `matter may very well have properties of which one has no idea and that can indeed be the basis of...experiential goings-on.' Once Strawson has made this argument, I believe that, though he himself does not say this, considerations of simplicity favor monism, not to mention the avoidance of the notorious mind-body problem.

I am not entirely happy with Strawson's answer to Why monism rather than dualism? But space does not permit me to bring out why here.

I conclude with the question about a supernatural realm. Strawson says that there is no satisfactory account of mental phenomena to be found in contemporary science or philosophy or anywhere else. He suggests that this is either because some mental phenomena are fundamental, like electrical charge, or because we do not have the revolutionary physics needed to give such a satisfactory account. But why not think about a supernatural explanation for mental phenomena? There's much precedent here: What explains the Big Bang? What explains life's origin? Etc. If there's no natural answers to these questions, why not look to supernatural answers? Perhaps the reason not to is brought out by paraphrasing William James: Supernaturalism is an outbirth of that sort of philosophizing whose great maxim, according to Dr. Hodgson, is: `Whatever you are totally ignorant of, assert to be the explanation of everything else?'