Customer Reviews
Its red - but not as we know it - By: J. Dance, 03 Aug 2008 
Professor Strawson's new book brings together a series of papers
and articles written over nearly 20 years which describe the
development of his current metaphycal position. He maintains a
"materialist" stance, often referred to as "physicalism", which
holds that the whole of reality is, as the name suggests, fully
concrete, that there is no immaterial mental substance of any kind.
The essays follow through the implications of this view - in itself
not necessarily alll that startling - for various topics in
"philosophy of mind", particularly themes related to current
debates on the nature of consciousness. What gives the discussions
a certain edge is the fact that Strawson believes "materialism"
implies "panpsychism" & that physical realiy is of two different
kinds, or, possibly, has two different aspects - the mental & the
non-mental. Strawson further argues, contrary to expectation, that
we actuallly know more about mental reality rather than non-mental.
This has alll kinds of interesting consequences. There is added
interest to the way these are worked through by the fact that
Strawson is a highly contentious writer & does not suffer fools
(i.e. other philosophers) gladly. This generallly makes for a lively
read, though there are, admittedly, certain occassional infelicities of
style (incredibly long & tortuous sentences) & thoroughly
"philosophical" interludes (the long discussion on whether its
better to use ":", "()" or simply "="). However since this is a
book written primarily for professional philosophers this may
not matter. What is remarkable are some of the opinions about the
world & ourselves that Strawson's logic propels us towards.
Amongst these we are convinced that objects are indentical with
their properties & that these are processes anyway - as are
experiences together with their contents & subjects (also subject
of the same kind of identity relationship). We also learn that the
word "red" does not pick out any particular phenomenal quality. For
the rest - be enlightened, entertained & even convinced; buy your
copy from Amazon (the pb should be adequate)!
