(PDF) Consciousness Never Left

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Philosophy of Mind
Consciousness Never Left
Galen Strawson
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Abstract
in The Return of Consciousness, ed. K. Almqvist and A. Haag (Stockholm: Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation), pp. 89–103.

It is a myth that there was a radical resurgence of discussion of the issue of conciousness in philosophy in the 1990s. False views of the course of the history of philosophy don't require the passage of time. Repeats and extends discussion in G. Strawson 'The consciousness myth'
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Strawson, G. (2017) ‘Consciousness never left’, in The Return of Consciousness, ed. K. Almqvist
and A. Haag (Stockholm: Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation), pp. 89–103.

galen strawson

Consciousness Never Left

* *

The Return of Consciousness?
A chance conversation recently caused me to look up an article I wrote
in 2002. It was a review of David Lodge’s book Consciousness and the Novel,
and opened with a comment on “the familiar iction of ‘The Return of
Consciousness’: the story of the blazing re-entry of consciousness into
philosophical and scientiic awareness in the 1990s after long, strange
decades in which its existence had been ignored or denied”.
This story was, I wrote,

mostly myth. It’s true that some twentieth-century philosophers and
psychologists, crazed by theory, really did deny the existence of consciousness.
Some danced in the behaviourist footsteps of Ryle and Wittgenstein (or
rather, their versions of Ryle and Wittgenstein), holding that to be in intense
pain is really just to behave in a certain way or be disposed to behave in a
certain way. Some said that an orgasm is really just a “sentence in the head”
with no sort of conscious feel to it at all.
But no one with any ear or eye or nose – any respect, feeling, gift, care – for
reality believed a word of it. Consciousness was always central on the real
agenda [in the philosophy of mind]. It was never ignored. Important ex-
perimental work on consciousness continued in psychology throughout the
narrow, wacko behaviourist decades, and the issue was always of primordial
importance for all sensible philosophers of mind, the ones who now ind it
faintly exasperating to read – several times a week – that the topic of con-
sciousness came staggering in from the wilderness only about ten years ago.

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“Does it matter that the story of the Return of Consciousness is in-
accurate?” I asked. “Not really,” I replied, “it’s good publicity for an
amazingly interesting subject.”
That was in 2002. It is still a good thing today that there is so much
interest in the topic of consciousness, and it is not, perhaps, very im-
portant that “the return of consciousness” is a myth when it comes to
philosophy. It is nevertheless regrettable in so far as it ignores (disregards,
writes of) those philosophers who were passionately and fruitfully pre-
occupied with the question of consciousness in the decades when it is
said to have been forgotten. It is also a little disheartening, even some-
what frightening, to see how myths about the history of ideas no longer
require the passing of time to evolve and can spring up almost instantly,
swept up in the roaring bombardment of what Saul Bellow called “the
moronic inferno”: the great media storm of television, the public prints
and now, above all, the internet.
I fear that quite a lot of what goes on in the academic world is part of
the moronic inferno. David Chalmers, for example, is widely thought to
have invented the so-called problem of consciousness, despite his own
repeated disavowals, although the issue that is supposed to constitute
the problem – the mystery – was given a clear, sharp formulation by
Descartes nearly 400 years ago, and has been right at the forefront of
philosophical discussion ever since.
I label it the “so-called problem of consciousness” because really there
is no such problem. We know that consciousness exists, we know this for
certain, and we know what it is. There is a fundamental sense in which
we know exactly what it is. What else could we reasonably want? It looks
as if we have confused the non-existent problem of consciousness with
the problem of matter – a very real problem, which continues to bale
physicists and cosmologists as much as philosophers and psychologists.
I shall return to this idea. For the moment I shall continue to speak of
the problem of consciousness. The belief that there is a problem arises
from the almost universal conviction that consciousness cannot possibly
be something material or physical. Leibniz expressed this conviction
vividly in 1714, in his image of the mill. Consciousness, he wrote, is

inexplicable on mechanical principles, i.e. by shapes and movements. If we
imagine a machine whose structure makes it think, sense, and be conscious,
we can conceive of it being enlarged in such a way that we can go inside it

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like a mill. Suppose we do: visiting its insides, we will never ind anything
but parts pushing each other – never anything that could explain a conscious
state.1

Philosophers have been making similar claims ever since, in a wonderful
variety of ways. They have kept the issue of consciousness right at the top
of the agenda in philosophy throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
“What exactly do you mean by consciousness?” If you are asking, you
are probably a philosopher. By “consciousness”, I simply mean what
people usually mean in this debate, something everybody is familiar with
– the subjective, qualitative character of conscious experience, the “phe-
nomenological” character of experience, the experiential “what-it’s-like”
of conscious experience, the “what-it’s-like” of hearing Billie Holiday or
Kirsten Flagstad singing, or being stung by a wasp, or feeling sleepy or
nauseous, or reading and understanding this sentence, or, in Bertrand
Russell’s striking example, “feeling the coldness of a frog”.2
Is there anything at all to the myth of the return of consciousness? It
is true that many psychologists in the 20th century were principally
engaged in behaviourist research, which puts consciousness to one side
for methodological reasons, although it does not deny its existence. It is
also true that a very small number of people really did seem to deny the
existence of consciousness, adopting the position labelled “eliminative
materialism” with respect to consciousness. They really did seem to make
what I believe to be the silliest claim ever made in the whole history
of human thought, committing themselves to what I refer to as “the
Denial”. Other philosophers held back from outright denial of the
existence of consciousness, but went almost as far. Paul Churchland
“confesse[d] a strong inclination towards eliminative materialism” in
1979. He called it “very much a live option”3, and this view is in no way
less remarkable than the outright denial.
How did this happen? With considerable regret, I blame the philoso-
phers. Cicero was right long ago when he said that “there is no statement
so absurd that no philosopher will make it”.4 But it is not just philoso-
phers. Francis Bacon made the point in 1620:

[O]nce the human mind has favoured certain views (whether because they’re
generally accepted and believed, or because it inds them attractive), it pulls
everything else into agreement with and support for them. Should they be
outweighed by more powerful countervailing considerations, it either fails

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to notice these, or scorns them, or makes ine distinctions in order to neutralize
and so reject them … thereby preserving untouched the authority of its
previous position.5

Mark Twain backed him up in 1906, remarking that “there isn’t anything
so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can’t believe
it”.6 Daniel Kahneman recently reairmed the point, drawing on research
in experimental psychology, that “people can maintain an unshakable
faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a
community of like-minded believers”.7
The claim that consciousness does not exist, or even might not exist,
is by far the most striking example of Kahneman’s dictum and therefore
the most frightening. It is important that we do not think that this
happens only in religious communities which go in for mass suicide, like
the followers of Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978, or the so-called
Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh, in Waco, Texas in 1993. That
said, those who deny the existence of consciousness do form a kind of
religious community, and they do indeed commit a form of suicide, albeit
of an intellectual kind. And this, as already remarked, is no less true of
those who, like Churchland in 1979, claim only that there might be no
such thing as consciousness. In terms of plausibility, it is exactly parallel
to saying “I don’t exist” or “I might not exist”. (There are of course
profoundly mentally disturbed people who do say just this: those who
sufer from extreme forms of Cotard’s delusion.)

The History of the Denial
The Denial is a distinctively 20th-century phenomenon – although it lives
on, somewhat comically, in the 21st. As far as I know, it irst began to be
heard around the time behaviourism became a popular programme in
psychology, an event one can date roughly to the publication of J.B.
Watson’s behaviourist “manifesto” in 1913, although many psychologists
were by then already thoroughly dissatisied with the “introspectionist”
methodology in psychology which behaviourism replaced. As early as
1911, E.A. Singer had declared that “consciousness is not something
inferred from behavior, it is behavior” (although he rejected the title “the
father of behaviourism”).8 Bertrand Russell was aware of the Denial in
1921, when he published The Analysis of Mind.9 In 1923, the distinguished

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behavioural psychologist Karl Lashley aimed “to show that the statement,
‘I am conscious’ does not mean anything more than the statement that
‘such and such physiological processes are going on within me’”.10 The
denial of consciousness was prominently placed on the philosophical table
two years later, when C.D. Broad wrote that “Reductive Materialism …
and strict Behaviourism”, both of which he understood to incorporate
the Denial, were

instances of the numerous class of theories which are so preposterously silly
that only very learned men could have thought of them. I may be accused of
breaking a butterly on a wheel in this discussion of Behaviourism. But it is
important to remember that a theory which is in fact absurd may be accepted
by the simple-minded because it is put forward in highly technical terms by
learned persons who are themselves too confused to know exactly what they
mean.11

All this may seem pretty extraordinary – until one recalls Cicero’s remark.
Behaviourism, after all, was introduced in psychology as a strictly method-
ological position, an approach to experimental research which did not
involve any sort of denial of the existence of consciousness, as already
observed. This behaviourism fully acknowledged the existence of con-
sciousness, but put it to one side on the ground that it was not susceptible
to a properly scientiic treatment. And yet it was by this time only a few
years away from metamorphosing into full-blown consciousness-denying
“philosophical behaviourism”, a view of the mind which, in certain parts
of the philosophical world, dominated the 1930s and 1940s.
Many psychologists took no notice of this distinctively philosophical
aberration. In 1948, for example, Edwin Boring, one of the leading
“operationist” psychologists in the mid-20th century, stood up stoutly for
the common-sense view that “consciousness is what you experience
immediately”.12 But the philosopher Brian Farrell latly disagreed, in a
paper published in 1950, one year after Gilbert Ryle’s wonderfully weird
book The Concept of Mind (which itself drew inspiration from the then
unpublished work of Ludwig Wittgenstein).13
Farrell’s case is in a way exemplary. It was Farrell, Wilde Reader in
Mental Philosophy at the University of Oxford, who irst asked the
question “what is it like to be a bat?”, in a paper called ‘Experience’
published in Mind in 1950.14 Thomas Nagel put the same question to
very good use in the 1970s, in a well known paper of that name,15 which

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galen strawson

made the fact – and supreme importance – of the existence of con-
sciousness philosophically salient right at the time when, according to
the myth, the question of consciousness was supposed to have been
occluded or forgotten. But Farrell had very diferent ideas when he asked
the question. In his 1950 paper he judged Boring’s claim to be a “comical
and pathogenic remark”. He reckoned that better times were coming:
once Western societies truly assimilate the work of the relevant sciences
“it is quite possible that the notion of ‘experience’ will be generally
discarded as delusive”. As things stand, it is only by “restricting the use
of the word ‘experience’ to ‘raw feels’ [that we can] go on defending the
view that ‘experience’ and ‘behaviour’ are not identical; and this line of
defence is hopeless”. In the present state of our language, “the notion of
‘experience’ can be shown to resemble an occult notion like ‘witchcraft’
in a primitive community that is in the process of being acculturated to
the West”. Fortunately, he concluded, science “is getting to the brink of
rejecting” experience as “unreal” or “non-existent”.16
These thoughts were echoed and amended by, among others, the
radical philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend in 1962 and Richard
Rorty in 1965, in the upsurge of discussion of consciousness which fol-
lowed the publication of the psychologist U.T. Place’s paper ‘Is Con-
sciousness a Brain Process?’ in 1956 and the Australian philosopher J.J.C.
Smart’s ‘Sensations and Brain processes’ in 1959.17 The discussion raged
on through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, precisely when the topic of
consciousness was meant to have faded from view. Among the key inter-
ventions were John Searle’s 1980 paper ‘Minds, Brains, and Programs’,
which expounded the “Chinese room argument” for consciousness, and
Frank Jackson’s 1982 paper ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’, which introduced
the famous story of “Mary in the black-and-white room”.18
The departure of the question of consciousness from the academic
scene is, then, a myth. So also, therefore, is the story of its wonderful
return, although a small group of individuals did in efect seek to deny
the very existence of consciousness, while others held, no less weirdly,
that it was theoretically possible that it might not exist. Looking back in
2003, Owen Flanagan remarked that

some of my best friends were once eliminativists … but they have almost all
seen that there is something seriously mad about the view. Most mad-dog
eliminativists have quietly transformed themselves into advocates of the sane

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view that talk at the level of mentality (psychology) ought to be constrained
by realistic assumptions at the level of brain science.19

But of course, and again, these doubts and denials did not have the con-
sequence that consciousness was ignored. On the contrary: to raise a
doubt about the existence of consciousness is ipso facto to bring the
question of consciousness into prominence (compare the raising of doubts
about the existence of God or Nazi death camps). Doubt and denial kept
questions about consciousness right at the forefront of attention, as other
philosophers duly argued back in ierce defence of consciousness.

The central confusion
I have suggested that the denial of the existence of consciousness is a
uniquely 20th-century phenomenon. Some, however, think that it is old.
A famous remark by Democritus, nearly 2,500 years ago, is sometimes
quoted in support of this view. Democritus was a materialist or physical-
ist, like many today (I use the words “materialism” and “physicalism”
interchangeably, although there is more to the physical than matter), and
he was reported by Galen, in the 2nd century, as having said: “There seems
to be colour, there seems to be sweetness, there seems to be bitterness.
But really there are only atoms and the void.”
The most natural way to take this remark is as a comment on the so-
called secondary qualities, the familiar claim that qualities like sweetness
and redness are not really objective properties of objects like strawberries:
they are really just qualities of our subjective conscious experience of
certain objective properties of strawberries. Understood in this way,
Democritus’ remark is not any denial of the existence of consciousness.
On the contrary: it presupposes the reality of consciousness and derives
all its force from that. It has nevertheless also been taken to be an
outright denial. After all, it comes down to us as the claim that “really
there are only atoms and the void”, and nothing else.
But even if that way of understanding the remark were right, it would
not follow that Democritus was an early denier. For the quoted passage
is only half of an imaginary exchange Democritus stages between “The
Intellect” and “The Senses”. The Intellect speaks irst: “There seems to
be colour, there seems to be sweetness, there seems to be bitterness. But
really there are only atoms and the void.” But then The Senses reply:

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galen strawson

“Poor Intellect, do you hope to defeat us while from us you borrow your
evidence? Your victory is your defeat.”20
The Senses point out that the evidence on which the Intellect draws
in making its claim is already enough to prove the falsity of the claim.
This a decisive rejoinder, even before one appeals to one of the oldest
points in philosophy: that the only thing one knows absolutely for
certain (apart from the fact that one exists) is that one has conscious
experience that has a certain character.
So much for the reply to the vainglorious Intellect. A similar move can
be made in response to Dan Dennett, who is also a materialist (as I am
myself). Dennett has suggested that “there is no such thing” as phe-
nomenology, conscious experience in the present sense, and that any
appearance to the contrary is, somehow, wholly the product of some
cognitive faculty, a “judgment module” that does not itself involve any
phenomenology. “There seems to be phenomenology,” he concedes, “but
it does not follow from this undeniable, universally attested fact that
there really is phenomenology. This is the crux.”21
It certainly is. It is the point at which it is clear either that Dennett has
gone wrong or that he does not mean what his opponents mean by
“phenomenology”. For what he claims does not follow does indeed
follow. As it stands, the claim by Dennett is necessarily false, because for
there to seem to be phenomenology just is for there to be phenomenology.
For it to seem to one that one is hearing a voice, seeing a room and so
on; such “seemings” just are phenomenological goings-on. To say that
“there seems to be phenomenology but there isn’t really any phe-
nomenology” is like saying that there appear to be appearances but there
aren’t really any appearances. It is about as coherent as saying “There’s
no such thing as truth, and that’s the truth.”
Descartes made the point very clearly in his Second Meditation in 1641.
He does not simply argue Cogito, ergo sum (I am conscious, therefore I
exist).22 He adds the following, when developing his famous thought-
experiment, in which he imagines he is dreaming, and therefore cannot
know that there is a real external world of tables and trees that exists
independently of his mind:

I am now seeing light, hearing a noise, feeling heat. But I am asleep, so all
this is false. Yet I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot
be false; what is called “having a sensory perception” is strictly just this.23

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consciousness never left

The hard problem of Matter
I have great hopes that neuroscientists will get better and better at
identifying the “neural correlates” of consciousness (although I think
“correlates” is the wrong word, because I think these neural goings-on
just are consciousness goings-on). But what they will do, in doing this, is
make more and more clear the real mystery that confronts us when we
consider the “mind–body problem” or “problem of consciousness”. This
is the mystery of the nature of matter, where by “matter” I mean physical
stuf in general. Or rather, and more strictly speaking, it’s the mystery of
what matter is if and in so far as it is not consciousness, not literally constituted
of consciousness.
There is, as I said earlier, a fundamental sense in which there is no
problem or mystery of consciousness. We know exactly what conscious-
ness is. We always have, because to have conscious experience is to know
what it is: the having is the knowing. As Russell pointed out in 1940 in his
Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, “there is a sense of ‘knowing’ in which,
when you have an experience, there is no diference between the ex-
perience and knowing that you have it” — where this includes knowing
what it is like.24 We not only know exactly what particular types of
experience are like, and therefore what they are (for what they are like,
experientially considered, is what they are, experientially considered). We
also know what experience is, generally considered, even though we have
direct experience only of certain limited kinds of experience. It is
precisely because we acquire an essentially general knowledge or
understanding of what conscious experience is, simply in having
conscious experience and in being the sophisticated concept-exercising
creatures that we are, that we are able to speculate that there may be
creatures – even, perhaps, other human beings – that have experience
which is quite unlike ours, and is perhaps unimaginable by us.
So, once again, we know exactly what consciousness is, both in par-
ticular cases (to taste pineapple is to know what it is like to taste
pineapple, as John Locke observed in 1689)25 and in general. There is in
this immoveable sense no problem of consciousness, and a fortiori no
hard problem of consciousness.
The hard problem is the problem of matter. We know a great many
facts about the structure of matter, facts which physics expresses with
numbers and equations: E = mc2, the inverse-square law of gravitational

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galen strawson

attraction, the periodic table and so on. But we have no idea about the
intrinsic nature of the stuf that leshes out this logico-mathematically
expressible structure – except, of course, in so far as it is or involves
consciousness, which we may do well to think of as a kind of stuf, a
quantity. (There is an enormous quantity of conscious experience on this
planet, whatever is going on elsewhere in the universe.)
I label this “the silence of physics”. Stephen Hawking puts it dra-
matically in his book A Brief History of Time. He irst observes that physics
is “just a set of rules and equations”. Then he asks: “What is it that
breathes ire into the equations and makes a universe for them to de-
scribe?”26 What is the intrinsic, non-structural nature of the physical
stuf that is structured in the way physics reveals? We may correctly reply
that it is energy that breathes ire into the equations, but then the ques-
tion arises again: what is the intrinsic nature of this energy-stuf? The
answer is that we do not know – except in so far as it is consciousness.
(All-out panpsychists think that the energy consists wholly of conscious-
ness; their more moderate cousins think that it consists only partly of
consciousness.)
This point about our ignorance of the ultimate non-structural, in-
trinsic nature of matter (in so far as it is something other than con-
sciousness) is secure before we consider any of the details of what we
cannot understand in physics: “dark matter”, “dark energy” or the extra-
ordinary phenomena of quantum mechanics. It is secure before the great
physicists of our times have their say – Niels Bohr, for example (“Those
who are not shocked when they irst come across quantum theory cannot
possibly have understood it”), or Richard Feynman (“I think I can safely
say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”) or John Wheeler (“If
you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not
understand it”).
There is a ine irony in the fact that the theorists who are most likely
to doubt or deny the existence of consciousness, continuing to insist that
everything is physical and that consciousness cannot possibly be physical,
are also those who are most insistent on the primacy of science. The
irony consists in the fact that it is precisely science that hammers home
the point that the ultimate intrinsic nature of the matter-energy that
constitutes the universe is utterly unknown – unless it is itself conscious-
ness.
The conclusion, in any case, remains. If everything is indeed physical,

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consciousness never left

as I and many others believe, then consciousness is itself wholly physical.
Physics cannot account for it, but that is no surprise and no objection.
No one who has any real understanding of what physics is and does has
ever thought that physics could lay bare the intrinsic, non-structural
nature of things, or give us strong reason to think that consciousness
itself is not wholly physical. Thomas Hobbes saw this in 1641, Anthony
Collins saw it in 1707, Joseph Priestley saw it in 1777. Bertrand Russell
made the key point very clearly in 1927: that “as regards the world in
general, both physical and mental, everything that we know of its in-
trinsic character is derived from the mental side”.27 He held to this view
until the end of his life: “We know nothing about the intrinsic quality of
physical events except when these are mental events that we directly
experience.”28 Here he fully endorsed the idea that conscious experience,
in all its phenomenological richness, is a wholly physical matter, as
physical as mass or charge.
It is a very remarkable fact that some have not only thought that
accepting materialism requires one to doubt or deny the existence of
consciousness (this is at least initially understandable) but have also then
gone ahead and done so. For the only possible move to make, if one
thinks that consciousness is incompatible with materialism, is to reject
materialism – simply because the existence of consciousness is certain.
Bur one does not have to do this, if one is a full-on materialist. All one
has to do is reject the mistake that got one into this position in the irst
place. This is the mistake of thinking that consciousness is incompatible
with materialism, a mistake which is based in turn on the mistake of
thinking we know the nature of the physical – and, in particular, know
enough about it to know that consciousness cannot possibly be physical.
This, again, is why I speak of the so-called problem of consciousness.
We know exactly what consciousness is. The only sense in which there is
a problem of consciousness is the sense in which there is a problem about
why anything exists at all: why is there something rather than nothing?
This famous, seemingly unanswerable, cosmic question does, if you like,
raise a problem. It indicates another fundamental thing that we do not
understand. But there is in this case no special problem of consciousness.
There can only appear to be an insolubly hard problem about how
consciousness can be nothing more than goings-on in the brain if one
makes an assumption one has no good reason to make: the assumption
(which is usually tightly tied to the false view that physics tells us more

99

galen strawson

than it does or can) that consciousness cannot be something material or
physical. Descartes made this assumption in the 1630s, and nearly every-
one has followed him ever since. Another ine irony in the debate about
consciousness is that it is precisely those who are most inclined to dis-
parage Descartes who are most powerfully committed to his mistaken
assumption.
There is of course still a very great diiculty. It is the diiculty of
understanding how the phenomena of physics and neurophysiology (the
numbers, equations, measurements and quantities that physics and
neurophysiology deal in) relate to the phenomena of conscious expe-
rience: the smells, the tastes, the emotions, the feels, the conscious
thoughts. With the great German physician and physiologist Emil Du
Bois-Reymond, I do not think there is any reason to believe that we will
ever understand how these two things relate. Ignoramus et ignorabimus, he
wrote in a famous paper published in 1872: we do not know and we will
not (ever) know.29
This point must be acknowledged. But, again, it is not a problem
about consciousness, about what consciousness is. It is a problem about
the limits of our knowledge of the nature of matter. As for the old
sweeping view that consciousness could not possibly be wholly physical,
the most thoughtful thinkers have always recognised that this is entirely
unwarranted – not only Hobbes, Collins, Priestley and Russell, whom I
have already mentioned, but also Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Eddington, R.W. Sellars, A.N. Whitehead,
Noam Chomsky and many others.
Yet, a great many philosophers have failed to see it. And even those
who have have been inclined to go on saying that consciousness is a
mystery. But, again, consciousness is the only thing in concrete reality of
which we can say that we know exactly what it is – because the having is
the knowing. We are, as some say, “immediately acquainted” with it,
simply in having it. We certainly do not know what matter is, by con-
trast, or physical stuf in general, except to the extent that consciousness
is itself a form of physical stuf – as I believe it is.
So there is no mystery of consciousness. What we do not understand,
what we ind a mystery, is how conscious experience can be simply a
matter of goings-on in the brain. But this is not because we do not know
what consciousness is. It is because we do not know how to relate the
things we know about the brain, when we use the language of physics and

100

consciousness never left

neurophysiology, to the things we know about the brain simply in having
conscious experience – whose nature we know simply in having it.

Notes
1. G. Leibniz, ‘Monadology’, in Leibniz, Monadology and Other Philosophical
Essays, trans. P. & A.M. Schrecker, Indianapolis, IA, Bobbs-Merrill, 1965 [1714–
20], §20.
2. B. Russell, An Outline of Philosophy, London, Routledge, 1992 [1927], p. 287.
3. P.M. Churchland, Scientiic Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, New York, NY,
Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 116.
4. M.T. Cicero, De senectute de amicitia de divinatione, trans. W. Falconer, London,
Heinemann, 1923 [44BC], p. 119.
5. F. Bacon, The New Organon, trans. L. Jardine & M. Silverthorne, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1620], §1.46.
6. M. Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, vol. 2, Berkeley, CA, University of
California Press, 2013 [1906–07], p. 1336.
7. D. Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, New York, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, p.
211.
8. E.A. Singer, ‘Mind as an observable object’, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and
Scientiic Methods, vol. 8, 1911, p. 183. “More accurately,” Singer continued, “our
belief in consciousness is an expectation of probable behavior based on an ob-
servation of actual behavior, a belief to be conirmed or refuted by more obser-
vation, as any other belief in a fact is to be tried out.”
9. B. Russell, The Analysis of Mind, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1921.
10. K. Lashley, ‘The Behavioristic Interpretation of Consciousness I’, The Psy-
chological Review, vol. 30, 1923, p. 272.
11. C.D. Broad, The Mind and Its Place in Nature, London, Kegan Paul, 1925, p. 5.
12. E.G. Boring, ‘The Nature of Psychology’, in E.G. Boring, H.S. Langfeld &
H.P. Weld (eds.), Foundations of Psychology, New York, Wiley, 1948, p. 6.
13. G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1949.
14. B. Farrell, ‘Experience’, Mind, no, 59, 1950, pp. 170–98.
15. T. Nagel, ‘What is it Like to be a Bat?’, in Nagel, Mortal Questions, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1979 [1974], pp. 165–80.
16. Farrell, ‘Experience’, pp. 194–95.
17. P. Feyerabend, ‘Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism’, in Realism, Ratio-
nalism and Scientiic Method, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981 [1962];
R. Rorty, ’Mind–Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories’, Review of Metaphysics, no.
19, 1965, pp. 24–54; U.T. Place, ‘Is Consciousness a Brain Process?’, British Journal
of Psychology, vol. 47, no. 1, 1956, pp. 44–50; J.J.C. Smart, ‘Sensations and Brain
Processes’, The Philosophical Review, vol. 68, no. 2, 1959, pp. 141–56.
18. J. Searle, ‘Minds, Brains, and Programs’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 3,

101

galen strawson

no. 3, 1980, pp. 417–24; F. Jackson, ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’, Philosophical Quarterly,
vol. 32, no. 127, 1982, pp. 127–36.
19. O. Flanagan, The Problem of the Soul, New York, NY, Basic Books, 2003, pp.
216–17.
20. Democritus c400BC, as reported by Galen; see J. Barnes, The Presocratics,
London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979, pp. 290–96.
21. D. Dennett, Consciousness Explained, Boston, MA, Little Brown, 1991, pp.
365–66.
22. “I am conscious” or “I am now having conscious experience” is the best
translation of cogito, for Descartes generally uses the word to cover all conscious
experiences, not just thinking.
23. R. Descartes, Meditations and Objections and Replies in The Philosophical Writ-
ings of Descartes, vol. 2, trans. J. Cottingham et al., Cambridge, Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1985 [1641], p. 19.
24. B. Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, London, George Allen and
Unwin, 1940, p. 49.
25. J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. Nidditch, Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1975 [1689–1700], §2.1.6.
26. S. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, New York, NY, Bantam Books, 1988, p.
174.
27. B. Russell, The Analysis of Matter, London, Routledge, 1992 [1927], p. 402.
28. B. Russell, ‘Mind and Matter’, in Russell, Portraits from Memory, Nottingham,
Spokesman, 1995 [1956], p. 153.
29. E. Du Bois-Reymond, ‘On the Limits of Scientiic Knowledge’, Popular
Science Monthly, vol. 5, 1874 [1872].

References
Bacon, F., The New Organon, trans. L. Jardine & M. Silverthorne, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1620].
Barnes, J., The Presocratics, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.
Boring, E.G., ‘The Nature of Psychology’, in E.G. Boring, H.S. Langfeld & H.P.
Weld (eds.), Foundations of Psychology, New York, Wiley, 1948.
Broad, C.D., The Mind and Its Place in Nature, London, Kegan Paul, 1925.
Churchland, P.M., Scientiic Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, New York, NY, Cam-
bridge University Press, 1979.
Cicero, M.T., De senectute de amicitia de divinatione, trans. W. Falconer, London,
Heinemann, 1923 [44BC].
Dennett, D., Consciousness Explained, Boston, MA, Little Brown, 1991.
Descartes, R. Meditations and Objections and Replies in The Philosophical Writings of
Descartes, vol. 2, trans. J. Cottingham et al., Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1985 [1641].

102

consciousness never left

Du Bois-Reymond, E., ‘On the Limits of Scientiic Knowledge’, Popular Science
Monthly, vol. 5, 1874 [1872].
Farrell, B., ‘Experience’, Mind, no. 59, 1950, pp. 170–98.
Feyerabend, P., ‘Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism’, in Realism, Rationalism
and Scientiic Method, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981 [1962].
Flanagan, O., The Problem of the Soul, New York, NY, Basic Books, 2003.
Hawking, S., A Brief History of Time, New York, NY, Bantam Books, 1988.
Jackson, F., ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’, Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 127, 1982,
pp. 127–36.
Kahneman, D., Thinking, Fast and Slow, New York, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2011.
Lashley, K., ‘The Behavioristic Interpretation of Consciousness I’, The Psychological
Review, vol. 30, 1923, pp. 237–72, 329–53.
Leibniz, G., ‘Monadology’, in Leibniz, Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays,
trans. P. & A.M. Schrecker, Indianapolis, IA, Bobbs-Merrill, 1965 [1714–20].
Locke, J., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. Nidditch, Oxford, Cla-
rendon Press, 1975 [1689–1700].
Nagel, T., ‘What is it Like to be a Bat?’, in Nagel, Mortal Questions, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1979 [1974], pp. 165–80.
Place, U.T., ‘Is Consciousness a Brain Process?’, British Journal of Psychology, vol. 47,
no. 1, 1956, pp. 44–50.
Quine, W.V., Theories and Things, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1981.
Rorty, R., ’Mind–Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories’, Review of Metaphysics, no.
19, 1965, pp. 24–54.
Russell, B., The Analysis of Mind, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1921.
Russell, B., An Outline of Philosophy, London, Routledge, 1992 [1927].
Russell, B., The Analysis of Matter, London, Routledge, 1992 [1927].
Russell, B., An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, London, George Allen and Unwin,
1940.
Russell, B., ‘Mind and Matter’, in Russell, Portraits from Memory, Nottingham,
Spokesman, 1995 [1956].
Ryle, G., The Concept of Mind, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1949.
Searle, J., ‘Minds, Brains, and Programs’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 3, no. 3,
1980, pp. 417–24.
Singer, E.A., ‘Mind as an observable object’, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and
Scientiic Methods, vol. 8, 1911, pp. 180–86.
Smart, J.J.C., ‘Sensations and Brain Processes’, The Philosophical Review, vol. 68, no.
2, 1959, 141–56.
Strawson, G., ‘The Mind’s I’, review of D. Lodge, Consciousness and the Novel, The
Guardian, November 23, 2002, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/nov/
23/iction.highereducation (accessed January 2, 2016).
Twain, M., Autobiography of Mark Twain, vol. 2, Berkeley, CA, University of Cali-
fornia Press, 2013 [1906–07].

103
References (64)
G. Leibniz, 'Monadology', in Leibniz, Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays, trans. P. & A.M. Schrecker, Indianapolis, IA, Bobbs-Merrill, 1965 [1714- 20], §20.
B. Russell, An Outline of Philosophy, London, Routledge, 1992 [1927], p. 287.
P.M. Churchland, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 116.
M.T. Cicero, De senectute de amicitia de divinatione, trans. W. Falconer, London, Heinemann, 1923 [44BC], p. 119.
F. Bacon, The New Organon, trans. L. Jardine & M. Silverthorne, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1620], §1.46.
M. Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, vol. 2, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 2013 [1906-07], p. 1336.
D. Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, New York, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, p. 211.
E.A. Singer, 'Mind as an observable object', Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, vol. 8, 1911, p. 183. "More accurately," Singer continued, "our belief in consciousness is an expectation of probable behavior based on an ob- servation of actual behavior, a belief to be confirmed or refuted by more obser- vation, as any other belief in a fact is to be tried out."
B. Russell, The Analysis of Mind, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1921.
K. Lashley, 'The Behavioristic Interpretation of Consciousness I', The Psy- chological Review, vol. 30, 1923, p. 272.
C.D. Broad, The Mind and Its Place in Nature, London, Kegan Paul, 1925, p. 5.
E.G. Boring, 'The Nature of Psychology', in E.G. Boring, H.S. Langfeld & H.P. Weld (eds.), Foundations of Psychology, New York, Wiley, 1948, p. 6.
G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1949.
B. Farrell, 'Experience', Mind, no, 59, 1950, pp. 170-98.
T. Nagel, 'What is it Like to be a Bat?', in Nagel, Mortal Questions, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979 [1974], pp. 165-80.
Farrell, 'Experience', pp. 194-95.
P. Feyerabend, 'Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism', in Realism, Ratio- nalism and Scientific Method, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981 [1962];
R. Rorty, 'Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories', Review of Metaphysics, no. 19, 1965, pp. 24-54;
U.T. Place, 'Is Consciousness a Brain Process?', British Journal of Psychology, vol. 47, no. 1, 1956, pp. 44-50; J.J.C. Smart, 'Sensations and Brain Processes', The Philosophical Review, vol. 68, no. 2, 1959, pp. 141-56.
J. Searle, 'Minds, Brains, and Programs', Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 3, no. 3, 1980, pp. 417-24;
F. Jackson, 'Epiphenomenal Qualia', Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 127, 1982, pp. 127-36.
O. Flanagan, The Problem of the Soul, New York, NY, Basic Books, 2003, pp. 216-17.
D. Dennett, Consciousness Explained, Boston, MA, Little Brown, 1991, pp. 365-66.
"I am conscious" or "I am now having conscious experience" is the best translation of cogito, for Descartes generally uses the word to cover all conscious experiences, not just thinking.
R. Descartes, Meditations and Objections and Replies in The Philosophical Writ - ings of Descartes, vol. 2, trans. J. Cottingham et al., Cambridge, Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1985 [1641], p. 19.
B. Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1940, p. 49.
J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. Nidditch, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1975 [1689-1700], §2.1.6.
S. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, New York, NY, Bantam Books, 1988, p. 174.
B. Russell, The Analysis of Matter, London, Routledge, 1992 [1927], p. 402.
B. Russell, 'Mind and Matter', in Russell, Portraits from Memory, Nottingham, Spokesman, 1995 [1956], p. 153.
E. Du Bois-Reymond, 'On the Limits of Scientific Knowledge', Popular Science Monthly, vol. 5, 1874 [1872]. References
Bacon, F., The New Organon, trans. L. Jardine & M. Silverthorne, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1620].
Barnes, J., The Presocratics, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.
Boring, E.G., 'The Nature of Psychology', in E.G. Boring, H.S. Langfeld & H.P. Weld (eds.), Foundations of Psychology, New York, Wiley, 1948.
Broad, C.D., The Mind and Its Place in Nature, London, Kegan Paul, 1925.
Churchland, P.M., Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, New York, NY, Cam- bridge University Press, 1979.
Cicero, M.T., De senectute de amicitia de divinatione, trans. W. Falconer, London, Heinemann, 1923 [44BC].
Dennett, D., Consciousness Explained, Boston, MA, Little Brown, 1991.
Descartes, R. Meditations and Objections and Replies in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, trans. J. Cottingham et al., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985 [1641].
Du Bois-Reymond, E., 'On the Limits of Scientific Knowledge', Popular Science Monthly, vol. 5, 1874 [1872].
Farrell, B., 'Experience', Mind, no. 59, 1950, pp. 170-98.
Feyerabend, P., 'Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism', in Realism, Rationalism and Scientific Method, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981 [1962].
Flanagan, O., The Problem of the Soul, New York, NY, Basic Books, 2003.
Hawking, S., A Brief History of Time, New York, NY, Bantam Books, 1988.
Jackson, F., 'Epiphenomenal Qualia', Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 127, 1982, pp. 127-36.
Kahneman, D., Thinking, Fast and Slow, New York, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2011.
Lashley, K., 'The Behavioristic Interpretation of Consciousness I', The Psychological Review, vol. 30, 1923, pp. 237-72, 329-53.
Leibniz, G., 'Monadology', in Leibniz, Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays, trans. P. & A.M. Schrecker, Indianapolis, IA, Bobbs-Merrill, 1965 [1714-20].
Locke, J., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. Nidditch, Oxford, Cla- ren don Press, 1975 [1689-1700].
Nagel, T., 'What is it Like to be a Bat?', in Nagel, Mortal Questions, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979 [1974], pp. 165-80.
Place, U.T., 'Is Consciousness a Brain Process?', British Journal of Psychology, vol. 47, no. 1, 1956, pp. 44-50.
Quine, W.V., Theories and Things, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1981.
Rorty, R., 'Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories', Review of Metaphysics, no. 19, 1965, pp. 24-54.
Russell, B., The Analysis of Mind, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1921.
Russell, B., An Outline of Philosophy, London, Routledge, 1992 [1927].
Russell, B., The Analysis of Matter, London, Routledge, 1992 [1927].
Russell, B., An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1940.
Russell, B., 'Mind and Matter', in Russell, Portraits from Memory, Nottingham, Spokesman, 1995 [1956].
Ryle, G., The Concept of Mind, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1949.
Searle, J., 'Minds, Brains, and Programs', Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 3, no. 3, 1980, pp. 417-24.
Singer, E.A., 'Mind as an observable object', Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, vol. 8, 1911, pp. 180-86.
Smart, J.J.C., 'Sensations and Brain Processes', The Philosophical Review, vol. 68, no. 2, 1959, 141-56.
Strawson, G., 'The Mind's I', review of D. Lodge, Consciousness and the Novel, The Guardian, November 23, 2002, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/nov/ 23/fiction.highereducation (accessed January 2, 2016).
Twain, M., Autobiography of Mark Twain, vol. 2, Berkeley, CA, University of Cali- fornia Press, 2013 [1906-07].
September 22, 2025
Galen Strawson
The University of Texas at Austin, Faculty Member
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Consciousness Manifesto: Physical origins of consciousness through evolution and revolution
James (Jim) E Beichler
Once the positivistic/escapist interpretation that human consciousness is epiphenomenal, i.e., accidental, is dismissed there are two possible approaches to the scientific study of consciousness. Bottom-up consciousness, from the individual organism or being to the universe, and Consciousness from the top-down, from the universe to the individual. These two approaches mark the outer boundaries of the present scientific search for a theoretical model of consciousness, even though Consciousness goes beyond science and moves into the realm of metaphysics. In any case, everything in between these two approaches is seriously muddled and clouded with speculations and metatheories that cannot be possible, which is common to the period preceding a scientific revolution. Some of those speculations and metatheories sound rather esoteric and even spiritual, which allows them to appeal to many people, but they would normally be considered non-scientific by definition if they were expressed for anything other than consciousness, which in itself presents a total mystery to science and the scientists who are willing to attempt to explain consciousness. On the other hand, what little concrete information science has at its disposal about consciousness does seem to match ideas in eastern mystical thought and in some cases earlier western ideas in Natural Philosophy that have been rejected by science, which further muddles the scientific quest for understanding consciousness. These ideas and concepts fit the qualitative aspects of mind that science normally associates with consciousness even better as well as the direct characteristics of consciousness, at least to the extent that such characteristics are known. Science needs to find a balance between them so it can maximize the effect of the next scientific revolution as well as the corresponding evolutionary leap in consciousness that is coming, but physics must simultaneously develop a working unified field theory to better define the universe in which consciousness of any kind, shape or form can and has developed.
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A hundred years of consciousness

Isaiah Berlin Lecture, Wolfson College, Oxford, May 25, 2017
Galen Strawson
Estudios de Filosofía, 2019
There occurred in the twentieth century the most remarkable episode in the history of human thought. A number of thinkers denied the existence of something we know with certainty to exist: consciousness, conscious experience. Others held back from the Denial, as I call it, but claimed that it might be true—a claim no less remarkable than the Denial. I want to document some aspects of this episode, with particular reference to the rise of philosophical behaviourism, and the transformation of materialism from a consciousness affirming-view into a consciousness-denying view.
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Consciousness and Existence
Givi A Amaglobeli
2017
This paper endeavors to examine the relationship between consciousnesses and existence, or more precisely – the relation and attitude of consciousness towards existence which in other terms is the relation and attitude of cognitive processes towards objective reality. The fundamental question that should be posed in this context can be formulated in the following manner: which one is primary and which is secondary, which is determinant, and how existence is being reflected in consciousness; how existence/ existent is reflected in and through language, which is the external manifestation of consciousness. We will begin with an examination of the issue by referring to ancient philosophical reflections comparing them with modern considerations in the Philosophy of Language.
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