A hundred years of consciousness: 'a long training in absurdity
| Autor | Galen Strawson |
| Cargo | The University of Texas at Austin, Texas, United States of America |
| Páginas | 9-43 |
Estud.los nº 59. Enero-junio de 2019. Universidad de Antioquia. pp. 9-43.
ISSN 0121-3628. ISSN-e 2256-358X
Cómo citar este artículo:
MLA: Strawson, Galen. “A hundred years of consciousness: ‘a long training in absurdity’”. Estudios de
Filosofía 59 (2019): 9-43.
APA: Strawson, G. (2019). A hundred years of consciousness: “a long training in absurdity”. Estudios de
Filosofía, 59, 9-43.
Chicago: Galen Strawson. “A hundred years of consciousness: ‘a long training in absurdity’”. Estudios de
Filosofía n.º 59 (2019): 9-43.
* This paper summarizes part of a larger research project with the title “The history of the concept of
consciousness” funded by the University of Texas at Austin. I’m grateful to Santiago Arango Muñoz
for his comments.
A hundred years of consciousness:
“a long training in absurdity”*
Cien años de la conciencia:
“una larga formación en el absurdo”
Por: Galen Strawson
The University of Texas at Austin
Texas, United States of America
ORCID: 0000-0003-0899-5906
Fecha de recepción: 28 de mayo de 2018
Fecha de aprobación: 31 de agosto de 2018
Doi: 10.17533/udea.ef.n59a02
Abstract. 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 we may call it, but
claimed that it might be true—a claim no less remarkable than the Denial. This paper documents
some aspects of this episode, with particular reference to two things. First, the development of two
views which are forms of the Denial —philosophical behaviourism, and functionalism considered
as a doctrine in the philosophy of mind— from a view that does not in any way involve the Denial:
psychological methodological behaviourism. Second, the rise of a way of understanding naturalism
—materialist or physicalist naturalism— that wrongly takes naturalism to entail the Denial.
Key words: consciousness, behaviourism, naturalism, materialism, physicalism, eliminativism, illusionism
Resumen. Uno de los episodios más notables en la historia del pensamiento humano ocurrió en el siglo XX.
Varios pensadores negaron la existencia de algo que sabemos con certeza que existe: la conciencia
o la experiencia consciente. Otros, aunque se contuvieron de llegar al punto de la Negación —como
podemos llamarlo—, armaron que podría ser cierta —una tesis no menos notable que la Negación.
Este texto documenta algunos aspectos de este episodio, con particular referencia a dos cosas. En
primer lugar, el desarrollo de dos puntos de vista que son formas de la Negación— el conductismo
losóco y el funcionalismo en la losofía de la mente— a partir de una perspectiva que no implica
de ninguna manera la Negación: el conductismo psicológico metodológico. En segundo lugar, el
surgimiento de una forma de entender el naturalismo —el naturalismo materialista o sicalista—
que interpreta erróneamente que el naturalismo implica la Negación.
Palabras clave: conciencia, conductismo, materialismo, sicalismo, eliminativismo, ilusionismo
Galen Strawson
10
Estud.los nº 59. Enero-junio de 2019. Universidad de Antioquia. pp. 9-43.
ISSN 0121-3628 • ISSN-e 2256-358X
1. The Denial
There occurred in the twentieth century the most remarkable episode in the whole
history of ideas—the whole history of human thought. A number of thinkers
denied the existence of something we know with certainty to exist. They denied
the existence of consciousness, conscious experience, the subjective qualitative
character of experience, the “phenomenal” (or “phenomenological”) “what-it-is-
like” of experience. Others held back from the Denial, as I’ll call it, but claimed
that it might be true—a claim in no way less remarkable than the Denial.
the rise of the behaviourist approach in psychology. The second was the spread
of a wholly naturalistic approach to reality. Both were good things in their way.
But the spread of the naturalistic approach was coupled to a mistake about what it
is to be a materialist, and it spiraled out of control, along with the behaviouristic
approach in psychology. Together they gave birth to the Denial: the Great Silliness.
The Denial also had, and still has, a third, deeper, darker root—something
much larger and achingly familiar: the crookedness of the “crooked timber of
humanity” (Kant, 1784, p. 23, cited by Berlin 1933).1 What the Denial shows, I
fear, is that it’s crookeder than one might ever have imagined.
(§§2-5). Then I will say something
rather gloomy about the crookedness—the third deep cause (§6). First of all, though,
I need to say something about the thing that is being denied—consciousness,
conscious experience, the what-it-is-like of experience, experience for short. What
is it?
The answer is easy. Anyone who has ever seen or heard or smelt or felt
anything knows what it is—anyone who has ever been in pain or hungry or satiated
or hot or cold or remorseful, amazed, dismayed, uncertain, or sleepy, anyone who
has suddenly remembered a missed appointment. To have such conscious experience
is to know—to be directly acquainted with—its intrinsic qualitative character as
1
the page reference is to the edition listed in the bibliography. In the case of quotations from languages
other than English I give a reference to a standard translation but do not always use that translation.
A hundred years of consciousness: “a long training in absurdity”
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Estud.los nº 59. Enero-junio de 2019. Universidad de Antioquia. pp. 9-43.
ISSN 0121-3628 • ISSN-e 2256-358X
there is to know about it.2 Many have pointed out that the only way to know the
it. Locke noted that
if a child were kept in a place, where he never saw any other but black and white, till
he were a man, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he that from his
childhood never tasted an oyster, or a pineapple, has of those particular relishes (Locke,
1689-1700, §2.1.6).
One way to express the Denial is to say that it’s the denial that anyone has
ever really had any of the experiences just mentioned. So it’s not surprising that
most Deniers deny that they’re Deniers. “Of course we agree that consciousness or
experience exists”, they say. But when the Deniers say this they mean something
“reversify” these words—where to looking-glass or reversify a word is to use it
in such a way that, whatever one means by it, it excludes what it actually means.
Who are these Deniers? I have in mind—at least—all who fully subscribe
to something called “philosophical behaviourism”, all who fully subscribe to
something called “functionalism” in the philosophy of mind. Few have been fully
explicit in their denial, but among those who have been explicit, or very nearly, we
but he steps back in 1979), Daniel Dennett (1991, 1993a, 1993b, 1995, 2001, 2013a,
Paul Churchland in 1979 “confesses a strong inclination towards” the Denial, and
calls it “very much a live option” (Churchland, 1979, p. 116).3
One of the strangest things the Deniers say is that although it genuinely and
undeniably seems that there is experience, there isn’t really any experience. The
seeming is in fact a complete illusion. The trouble with this is well known. The
trouble is that any such seeming or illusion is, necessarily, a real occurrence, and
is already an instance of the very thing that is being said to be an illusion. Say
you’re hypnotized to feel pain. Someone may say that you’re not really in pain, that
reply is immediate: truly to seem to feel pain just is to be in pain. In this case it’s
2 This is the only thing I’m going to mean by “consciousness”, “conscious experience” and “experience”
used as a synonym of “consciousness”.
3 Some have proposed Paul Souriau as an earlier Denier (Souriau, 1886), but his target is Cartesian self-
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