A hundred years of consciousness: “a long training in absurdity”
Estudios de Filosofía January 1, 2019 G. Strawson 41 citations
In the twentieth century, some thinkers denied the existence of consciousness, a phenomenon the author calls the Denial. Others considered the Denial possibly true. This paper documents aspects of this episode, focusing on the development of two forms of the Denial—philosophical behaviorism and functionalism in the philosophy of mind—from psychological methodological behaviorism, which does not involve the Denial. It also examines a materialist or physicalist naturalism that wrongly takes naturalism to entail the Denial.