Cavendish and Strawson on Emergence, Mind, and Self
David Cunning
July 7, 2023 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198879466.003.0016 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Margaret Cavendish's seventeenth-century materialism compares favorably with, and in many respects surpasses, Galen Strawson's contemporary argument that mental states cannot emerge from wholly non-mental matter, a view Strawson uses to support panpsychism. |
Abstract
Abstract In a series of provocative papers Galen Strawson defends the view that mental states never emerge or arise from the behavior and interaction of bodies that exhibit no trace of mentality themselves. Strawson then leverages the view in support of panpsychism. Macroscopic bodies like the human brain do possess mental states, and so the matter of which they are composed must not be entirely absent of mentality. At the very least it must contain a kind of proto-mentality, and on the assumption that the matter that resides at the most elemental level of the human brain is not entirely dissimilar to the matter that composes the rest of the universe, mentality—or at least proto-mentality—abounds. Here I engage a comparative discussion of the materialism of Strawson and the similar view at play in work of the seventeenth-century philosopher Margaret Cavendish. I argue that in many respects Cavendish comes out ahead.