Strawson’s Realistic Monism and Real Materialism

In defining an all-pervading materialism, encompassing all mental as well as all physical properties and objects, philosopher Galen Strawson espouses his kind of monism, “Realistic Monism,” as he calls it (Strawson, 2009). “I'm attracted to the thing-monist view,” he says, “according to which the universe is a single thing in some non-trivial sense” (Strawson, 2020a). His principal thesis is “the primacy of panpsychism” and he claims “compelling reasons for favoring panpsychism above all other positive substantive proposals about the fundamental nature of concrete reality” (Strawson, 2020b).

Strawson deconstructs the concept and use of the term “materialism,” showing that, historically, it had nothing to do with denial of the existence of consciousness, but rather that consciousness is wholly material. He laments that the words “materialism” and “physicalism” have come to be treated as synonymous and to involve denial of the existence of consciousness. It is, he says, ironic that these two words have “been used to name a position in the philosophy of mind that directly rejects the heart of materialism and is certainly false” (Strawson, 2011).

Strawson asserts that physicalism (or materialism^[1]), that is, “real physicalism” (or “real materialism”), entails panexperientialism or panpsychism, on one assumption: it entails panpsychism given the impossibility of “radical” emergence. Moreover, given that all physical stuff is energy, in one form or another, we may suppose that “all energy is an experience-involving phenomenon” (Section: Strawson, 2003, 2009, 2015; 2020a; Strawson and Russell, 2021; Strawson, 2011).

Strawson happily admits, “This sounded crazy to me for a long time, but I am quite used to it, now that I know that there is no alternative …” It may also sound odd to use “physical” to characterize mental phenomena like experiential phenomena, but real physicalism, realistic physicalism, entails panpsychism, and whatever problems are raised by this fact, he exhorts, are problems a real physicalist must face.

Strawson defines physicalism to be the view that “every real, concrete phenomenon in the universe is … physical.” It is a view about the actual universe, and that he assumes it is true. But then comes the “Strawsonian Twist.”

What does it take to be a “realistic physicalist” or a “real physicalist?” He makes one thing absolutely clear. “You're certainly not a realistic physicalist, you're not a real physicalist, if you deny the existence of the phenomenon whose existence is more certain than the existence of anything else: experience, ‘consciousness’, conscious experience, ‘phenomenology’, experiential ‘what-it's-likeness’, feeling, sensation, explicit conscious thought as we have it and know it at almost every waking moment.”

All materialists hold that every concrete phenomenon in the universe is physical, and they are neither sensible nor realistic, Strawson says, if they have any inclination to deny the concrete reality of mental phenomena like experiential phenomena. He concludes by taking no prisoners: “Full recognition of the reality of experience, then, is the obligatory starting point for any remotely realistic version of physicalism … It is the obligatory starting point for any theory that can legitimately claim to be ‘naturalistic’ because experience is itself the fundamental given natural fact” (Strawson, 2008).

As a “real physicalist,” in his definition, Strawson holds that the mental/experiential is physical, and he is happy to say, along with many other physicalists, that experience is ‘really just neurons firing’, at least in the case of biological organisms like ourselves. But when he says these words he means something radically different from what almost all physicalists mean. He does not mean that all characteristics of what is going on, in the case of experience, can be described by physics and neurophysiology (or any non-revolutionary extensions of them). His claim is stunningly different. It's that experiential phenomena “just are” physical, so that there is a lot more to neurons than physics and neurophysiology account for (or can account for). No one who disagrees with this, he says, is a “real physicalist.” This is Strawson's challenge.

Reviewing Strawson's book subtitled, “Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?”, philosopher Jerry Fodor shares Strawson's intuition that the hard problem is “not going to get solved for free” and “views that we cherish will be damaged in the process.” Fodor concludes, “If you want an idea of just how hard the hard problem is, and just how strange things can look when you face its hardness without flinching, this [Strawson's book] is the right book to read” (Fodor, 2007).

Footnote

[1]. Strawson uses “physicalism” and “materialism” interchangeably as ontological descriptors, though at one point preferring “physicalism” because “matter” is now specially associated with mass-energy while “physical” is more encompassing. For the uses of “materialism” and “physicalism” on this website, see Footnote 12 of “Exploring Consciousness” (following here):

“Materialism” and “physicalism” are roughly equivalent ontological terms, often used interchangeably, although physicalism can cover wider territory, including properties that the laws of physics describe, e.g., space, time, energy, matter. Moreover, physicalism can connote more epistemological matters, in terms of how we can know things. Materialism can be distinguished as the more restrictive term, meaning all that is real is matter and its equivalents. It connotes more ontological concerns, in terms of what really exists. In this Landscape, we go more with “materialism,” which also maintains historical continuity.